The only way to scale up, given this architecture, is to throw more hardware at the problem. Genesis says version 2 will rely less on Perl, more on compiled C code. Consider building an application engine in Perl that runs as a da emon, along with a lightweight CGI stub that transmits user requests to the engine and receives data from it. This architecture will improve any CGI application, compiled or not. Two compiled applications that take this approach are Web Crossing, whose engine ran as a Unix process on the Indy, and Cold Fusion Forums, whose engine ran as an NT service on a Pentium-based Dell.
Web browsers talk to both applications' engines by way of compiled CGI stubs.
With the engine always running, the bottleneck becomes the Web server's ability to execute the stubs. Conventional CGI technology requires the server to spawn a process for each stub invocation. It's harder to judge the benefits of each approach because both are evolving at warp speed. Based on the reactions of visitors to The BYTE Site, NNTP wins. But the boundaries are already blurry.