some performance improvements

[superwhiskers]

this pull request provides some performance improvements that target larger cases, like activsg10k.

it is being opened to provide some visibility as i look for other potential changes that may be made

Checklist

• All tests pass.
• Code compiles cleanly with flags -Wall -Wpedantic -Wconversion -Wextra.
• The new code follows GridKit™ style guidelines.
• There are unit tests for the new code.
• The new code is documented.
• The feature branch is rebased with respect to the target branch.
• The CHANGELOG.md has been updated to reflect the changes. If this is a minor PR that is part of a larger fix already included in the file, state so.