Well the hardfloat stuff was clearly worthwhile, but some meaningful benchmarks against x86 would be more useful. My ARM machines are all faster than my terrible Atom, but a lot slower than anything modern for cpu intensive benchmarks.
how long does it take to compile the linux kernel?
It takes "ages", but that is mainly due to the very slow mass storage speed that current ARM SoCs feature. Mobile phones and development boards like the Pandaboard use SD cards as mass storage and SD cards can be very slow when not used for typically linear read/write operations in your digital camera
I have an ssd on one of my machines, which helps but that is a slower softfloat single core box, so it still takes ages.
Do you have any data to back this up? I have compiled kernels on an ARMv5 device off a (I believe PCI-e-hosted) 7200rpm SATA hard disk, and it _is_ slow.
I have only anecdotal evidence from people that are masochistic enough to compile their stuff natively, I prefer to cross-build.