diff --git a/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c b/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
new file mode 100644
index 7549542..53be8ec
*** a/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
--- b/src/backend/utils/adt/varlena.c
*************** varstr_cmp(char *arg1, int len1, char *a
*** 1405,1410 ****
--- 1405,1438 ----
  #endif
  		}

+ 		/*
+ 		 * Fast path:  Attempt an entirely opportunistic "memcmp() == 0".
+ 		 *
+ 		 * In general there is no reason to be optimistic about being able to
+ 		 * resolve the string comparison in this way.  There are many usage
+ 		 * patterns in which this fast path will never be taken, and some in
+ 		 * which it will frequently be taken.  When it is frequently taken,
+ 		 * clearly the optimization is worthwhile, since strcoll() is known to
+ 		 * be very expensive.  When it is not taken, the overhead is completely
+ 		 * negligible, and perhaps even immeasurably small, even in the worst
+ 		 * case.  We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
+ 		 *
+ 		 * These counter-intuitive performance characteristics are likely
+ 		 * explained by the dominant memory latency cost when performing a
+ 		 * strcoll();  in practice, this may give the compiler and CPU
+ 		 * sufficient leeway to order things in a way that hides the overhead
+ 		 * of useless memcmp() calls.  Sorting is very probably bottlenecked on
+ 		 * memory bandwidth, and so it's worth it to use a few arithmetic
+ 		 * instructions on the off chance that it results in a saving in memory
+ 		 * bandwidth.  In effect, this makes use of a capacity that would
+ 		 * otherwise go unused.  The same memory needed to be read into CPU
+ 		 * cache at this juncture anyway.  Modern CPUs can execute hundreds of
+ 		 * instructions in the time taken to fetch a single cache line from
+ 		 * main memory.
+ 		 */
+ 		if (len1 == len2 && memcmp(arg1, arg2, len1) == 0)
+ 			return 0;
+ 
  #ifdef WIN32
  		/* Win32 does not have utf-8, so we need to map to UTF-16 */
  		if (GetDatabaseEncoding() == PG_UTF8)
*************** bttextfastcmp_locale(Datum x, Datum y, S
*** 1842,1847 ****
--- 1870,1885 ----
  	len1 = VARSIZE_ANY_EXHDR(arg1);
  	len2 = VARSIZE_ANY_EXHDR(arg2);

+ 	/*
+ 	 * Fast path:  Attempt an entirely opportunistic memcmp() == 0, as
+ 	 * explained within varstr_cmp()
+ 	 */
+ 	if (len1 == len2 && memcmp(a1p, a2p, len1) == 0)
+ 	{
+ 		result = 0;
+ 		goto done;
+ 	}
+ 
  	if (len1 >= tss->buflen1)
  	{
  		pfree(tss->buf1);
*************** bttextfastcmp_locale(Datum x, Datum y, S
*** 1875,1880 ****
--- 1913,1919 ----
  	if (result == 0)
  		result = strcmp(tss->buf1, tss->buf2);

+ done:
  	/* We can't afford to leak memory here. */
  	if (PointerGetDatum(arg1) != x)
  		pfree(arg1);