PCL/CLOS performance

[kempf@Sun.COM]

I would caution people who are unhappy with PCL performance to take a look
at what your underlying Common Lisp is doing. Depending on your Common
Lisp, the performance of current PCL generic function invocation can
vary from 3.5X to 15X a function call. There is much that can be done in 
an implementation dependent manner to speed up PCL, however, it is
unfair to say that CLOS or PCL is a dog just because the Common
Lisp you happen to be using doesn't generate particularly good code
at the moment. If you are otherwise happy with your Common Lisp, then
talk to whoever is supporting it about improving code generation,
otherwise, look into getting a new one. In the long run, I think
everyone's Common Lisp should converge to about 2.0-2.5X a function
call for a single argument dispatch message send, possibly faster, if
the TICLOS implementation is any guide.

		jak