Long Key Performance

[Anonymous]

I've been doing some experiments on my old hardware to determine the
overhead 4096 bit keys need.

Generating a 4096 bit key takes around 20 minutes.

Encrypting a ~20k message with a 4096 bit key takes less than 2
seconds, using a keyring with only one key.

Encrypting with same setup using my default keyring (2000+ keys) takes
around 15 seconds.

Conclusion: Long key sizes are not an important gpg performance issue.