The fastest way to run perl programs is to not make them into an .exe first. You might also look at B::C. I believe the .c files and the .exes output from them will be a lot faster than PAR binaries, but they may not work as well.

Basically, the problem is that perl just wasn't designed to be packed up like this. It can be made to work, but you have to suffer through unpacking an entire perl distribution to your tempfiles dir. And even when it's warm (as you say), you still have a 15meg binary to go through looking for the 1k of perl code to execute.

I happen to use and enjoy PAR in production environments, but I have come to accept certain performance penalties. The only real advantage is not having to install perl or the related packages. Which can be an enormous advantage in certain specialized settings.

UPDATE: I overstruck B::C because when it does work it's a fluke. It's a disaster and diotalevi is right to object. I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't even being maintained anymore. Curiously, I just read somewhere it might get resurrected in 5.10?