[CentOS] Any way to reduce CPU use of OpenSSH?

Thu Dec 11 15:14:53 UTC 2008
Steve Snyder <swsnyder at snydernet.net>

On my CentOS v5.2 server (dual Pentium4) the OpenSSH daemon stands out 
as being the most CPU-intensive of the applications running, It's used 
176 minutes of CPU time in the last 2 days alone.

Is there any way to lower the CPU utilization without compromising 
security? (I.e. without using a less processor-intensive 
encrypt/decrypt algorithm?)

I'm getting the CPU use figures from top, so there no fine-grained info 
on exactly what code is taking so much time.  I'm assuming that the 
bulk of the time is spent in the OpenSSL libraries.

Is there some hardware add-on or processor-specific optimization that 
would reduce the CPU load incurred by OpenSSH?

Thanks.