Does Shibboleth have the ability to be tuned for faster authentication?

Question

My question is "Does Shibboleth have the ability to be tuned for faster authentication?" I am trying to do some performance tuning to make SSO faster for my end users. We have Shibboleth hitting our AD/Optimal environment, then authenticating the end users by their UPN into a Java application, rather then having to manually sign into this java web app to work. Are there any switches/settings/etc. within Shibboleth that could provide more server resources to speed this process up?

I am currently unaware of any settings available, therefore I am asking for advice regarding this subject.