Fast positive integer power function

I'm trying to figure out how to compute an integer power of a double efficiently with as little overhead as possible (trying to avoid loops and recursion to minimize the amount of calls and jumps). Calculation speed is the priority.
So far I got this trivial piece of code:

double f(double a,char b){
if(b==2)return a*a;
if(b==3)return a*a*a;
if(b==4)return a*a*a*a;
if(b==5)return a*a*a*a*a;
if(b==6)return a*a*a*a*a*a;
if(b==7)return a*a*a*a*a*a*a;
if(b==8)return a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a;
if(b==9)return a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a;
        return a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a*a;
}

...which of course assumes the exponent is at most 10. The code can easily be expanded if higher exponents are needed.
I'm thinking this is probably optimal, but I know you /prog/riders have some magic tricks up your sleeve, so hit me with them.

No, because most hardware doesn't have a built in ^ operator. You need to extract the mantissa and exponent bits directly from the IEEE754 encoding and do some bit twiddling and take the logarithm in base 2.