Hello,
I set up a new NetBSD partition (actually recycled a FreeBSD partition I haven't used in over a year) and installed the GENERIC.MP on it. After waiting to get the machine to boot (I get it to boot > 25% of the time with that kernel) I tried compiling both from source and through pkgsrc. The difference is telling!! It is as fast compiling with the multiprocessor kernel as with my usual Linux (Slackware) experience (actually faster!).
Example: With GENERIC kernel, tcsh takes the better part of an hour to compile through pkgsrc. With GENERIC.MP kernel, that same compilation takes less than 2 minutes! I am not kidding!!!
My task now is to try and get the MP kernel more reliable - maybe I'll try and compile my own kernel. This is food for another thread in a different sub-forum here, though.
See this thread.