If you plan to implement an optimization, I recommend a pointer propagation. This is very simple and still lots of optimizers ignore it. For example,

    mem += 3;
    while (mem[0]) { mem += 1; mem[0] -= 1; mem += 1; }
    mem -= 4;
    mem[0] = 0;

    while (mem[3]) { mem[1] -= 1; mem += 2; }
    mem[-1] = 0;
    mem -= 1; /* you can safely ignore this at the end of file */

    ++++++++++[>++++++++<-]>--. N
    -----.                      I
    ------.                     C
    ++.                         E
    <++++++[>------<-]>.        !

Shame on me for using Visual Studio. I turned to pure Linux/Mac development environments in recent years.

Then try and see if it's faster than this one - http://mazonka.com/brainf/bff4.c

See BrainF.cpp in particular.

It's a decent first illustration of the great level of abstraction LLVM offers.