Block confirmation speed Based upon any standard you think relevant, how quickly are current blocks being verified for rule-following such as correct balance tallies, true transactions, correct rewards &amp; fees?

Is this an onerous process?  Would a database quicken this process?

Do you have any suggestions for improving block verification speed?
The bulk of the work lies in verifying each transaction within the block.  This means that the signatures need to be checked for each transaction input, which requires a lot of CPU processing.  So, one way to improve the verification speed would be to have a hardware-assist for the verification process (such as a specialized ASIC chip).  I don't know if a miner ASIC could be used, but it is an interesting thought.