I have made three changes to the rtree code: one bug fix and

two performance improvements.  I put an explanation of the
changes at

http://cs1.cs.nyu.edu/been/postgres-rtree.html

The performance improvements are quite significant.

All the changes are in the file src/backend/access/rtree/rtree.c

I was working with the 7.1.3 code.

I'm including the diff output as an attachment.

Kenneth Been