Although this is the opposite of many peoples typical problem, I need to increase the amount of CPU my program is using.

I have been tasked with converting an old VB6 program to perl. I have now completed it, and it is working fine (read as - the output is correct). My problem is that it is taking multiple times longer to run in PERL than the original was in VB6. Upon eyeing the process, I notice that it is only using an average of 3 - 4% of CPU while running.

Is there any way to force PERL to run faster by using more CPU time? The issue can be seen in this profiler output: 

BerkeleyDB::AUTOLOAD has -1 unstacked calls in outer
BerkeleyDB::__ANON__ has 1 unstacked calls in outer
Total Elapsed Time = 261.6975 Seconds
  User+System Time = 14.43755 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c  Name
 46.1   6.667  6.667 124415   0.0001 0.0001  BerkeleyDB::Common::db_ge
 41.0   5.924 15.515      1   5.9238 15.515  main::ProcessLog
 15.0   2.167  8.834 124415   0.0000 0.0001  BerkeleyDB::_tiedHash::FE
+TCH
 3.89   0.561  0.561  22983   0.0000 0.0000  BerkeleyDB::Common::db_pu
+t
 1.36   0.197  0.757  22983   0.0000 0.0000  BerkeleyDB::_tiedHash::ST
+ORE
 0.11   0.016  0.016      3   0.0053 0.0053  vars::BEGIN
 0.11   0.016  0.016      1   0.0160 0.0160  XSLoader::load
 0.10   0.015  0.015      1   0.0150 0.0150  BerkeleyDB::Term::close_e
+verything
 0.10   0.015  0.015      5   0.0030 0.0030  BerkeleyDB::Hash::_db_ope
+n_hash
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_load_file
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_undef_symb
+ols
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_find_symbo
+ls
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_install_xs
+ub
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  BerkeleyDB::bootstrap
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  BerkeleyDB::constant

[download]

The main thing there being that only 14 cpu seconds out of 261 seconds of real run time is being used. This was done on a file significantly smaller than production, so I'm sure any of you can see how expensive this begins to become on time.

Any help on getting this moving at a more appropriate pace would be greatly appreciated. I am thinking about dividing the input file into multiple files and running multiple threads to speed this up, but would like to see some potential alternatives first.

Thanks!

In reply to Increasing CPU Usage/Decreasing Run Time by NathanE

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