Oh its a *huge* portal application. In fact, its so large, the JVM *needs* 1GB + ram to run the thing. I have a linode (Virtual Private Server) that has 384MB ram, and when I tested liferay on it, I got administration emails from the company telling me I did so much io (swapping) that they were concerned.
Anyway, I had to make a VM on my i7 running CentOS to host the thing as a test. I gave it 3GB ram.
Right now, the best idea that we have (my group working on this) is using something like The Grinder (load test app) to hit the site after the app has been deployed (pre-compiling disabled) and to go through the site using multiple HTTP connections from the back, front and middle to give us three threads of compiling JSPs (one for each part that we hit) to essentially give us multithreaded JSP compiles.
[Message sent by forum member 'bd1308']
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=471126