Limbic~Region
You have the best reason of all. . .

• better performance

perl just gets better and better. ( It's already the best! :-)

I have a threaded and non-threaded version of perl for each release. The AIX stock perl can co-exist with other versions, but keep in mind that you don't want to mix threaded / non-threaded libraries, so use the 'sh Configure -Dprefix=/...' for non-threaded versions, and use the default for the threaded versions or vice-versa.

Use the first line of your script to define which version of perl to use,

'#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.12.2-t -w' or '#!/usr/opt/bin/perl5.12.2-nt -w'

You will have the same concerns/problems about libraries for 32-bit and 64-bit compiling. I use two different gcc compilers for 32/64 bit, and use a 3rd for downloading from CPAN.

Good Luck!