The time may not be so out of line. From the XML::Simple pod example, I wrote

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;
use Time::HiRes qw( gettimeofday tv_interval );

my $t0 = [gettimeofday];
my $config = XMLin();
my $elapsed = tv_interval ( $t0 );

print "Parsing took $elapsed seconds\n";
print Dumper($config);
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which resulted in

Parsing took 0.567832 seconds
$VAR1 = {
          'debugfile' => '/tmp/foo.debug',
          'logdir' => '/var/log/foo/',
          'server' => {
                        'sahara' => {
                                      'address' => [
                                                     '10.0.0.101',
                                                     '10.0.1.101'
                                                   ],
                                      'osversion' => '2.6',
                                      'osname' => 'solaris'
                                    },
                        'gobi' => {
                                    'address' => '10.0.0.102',
                                    'osversion' => '6.5',
                                    'osname' => 'irix'
                                  },
                        'kalahari' => {
                                        'address' => [
                                                       '10.0.0.103',
                                                       '10.0.1.103'
                                                     ],
                                        'osversion' => '2.0.34',
                                        'osname' => 'linux'
                                      }
                      }
        };
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on my old DEC, er, Compaq, er, HP Alpha.

XML::Simple is layered atop XML::Parser so I'd expect XML::Parser to be a little quicker, but not much.

-Mark