well, I would benchmark it against LAPACK, but I don't have the time, but if you want, you can do the benchmark and show me that I'm wrong :)

So, you haven't really benchmarked it against LAPACK. Yet, you imply that PDL is slower than not just one (LAPACK) but many other similar tools. You want to be shown you are wrong. Why don't you make the effort and show that what you are asserting is indeed true.

Fwiw, I do use Perl/PDL, and I don't use LAPACK, so it doesn't matter how fast LAPACK is.