As shmem says, subroutine/method calls are pretty expensive. You can shave some off by removing the shift, as diotalevi suggests. Removing the return shaves off some more: 
use Benchmark qw(:all);

my $a = 10;
my $b = 20;

cmpthese(-2, {
        'Sub' => sub {
            my $c = add ($a, $b);
        },
        'Method' => sub {
            my $c = __PACKAGE__->meth_add ($a, $b);
        },
        'Sub^2' => sub {
            my $c = add2 ($a, $b);
        },
        'Method^2' => sub {
            my $c = __PACKAGE__->meth2 ($a, $b);
        },
        'Method^3' => sub {
            my $c = __PACKAGE__->meth3 ($a, $b);
        },
    });

sub add {
    return $_[0] + $_[1];
}

sub add2 {
    $_[0] + $_[1]
}

sub meth_add {
    shift;
    return $_[0] + $_[1];
}

sub meth2 {
    shift;
    $_[0] + $_[1]
}

sub meth3 {
    $_[1] + $_[2]
}

[download]
              Rate   Method Method^2 Method^3      Sub    Sub^2
Method    892013/s       --      -5%     -12%     -23%     -30%
Method^2  936229/s       5%       --      -7%     -20%     -27%
Method^3 1008242/s      13%       8%       --     -13%     -21%
Sub      1165141/s      31%      24%      16%       --      -9%
Sub^2    1275428/s      43%      36%      27%       9%       --

[download]

In reply to Re: Performance issues with subroutines/methods by ysth
in thread Performance issues with subroutines/methods by ribasushi

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