Compile-time compilation of constants and constructors is slower with Intel Fortran than gfortran and other Fortran compilers. It is due to the way our front-end handles compile-time constants. There was a discussion on this recently on numeric data. It is the same with numeric and character compile time constants. We made a few minor tweaks but not enough to make much difference. This is nothing we can fix, it is deeply embedded in how we parse and initialize constants with our front-end. Without a major rewrite of our entire front end this cannot be sped up.