SQL operations such as CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, LOCALTIME, and
conversion of "now" in a datetime input string have to obtain the
transaction start timestamp ("now()") as a broken-down struct pg_tm.
This is a remarkably expensive conversion, and since now() does not
change intra-transaction, it doesn't really need to be done more than
once per transaction.  Introducing a simple cache provides visible
speedups in queries that compute these values many times, for example
insertion of many rows that use a default value of CURRENT_DATE.

Peter Smith, with a bit of kibitzing by me

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAHut+Pu89TWjq530V2gY5O6SWi=OEJMQ_VHMt8bdZB_9JFna5A@mail.gmail.com