$ time perl parallel.pl wc < LARGE_FILE
(snip)...
Waiting for workers to finish
    955 5389459 56444912
    252 6883234 68045448
    284 3803959 62591850
    422 6429932 63866545

real	0m1.438s
user	0m3.864s
sys	0m0.242s

$ time wc < LARGE_FILE
     1913  22506581 250948755

real	0m2.332s
user	0m2.277s
sys	0m0.052s