Question: Out of curiosity, why does it often take *seconds* to obtain network configuration via DHCP when the CPU is capable of processing millions of operations per second and ping to the router takes a couple of milliseconds?

In my home environment with one WiFi router and about 5 devices, it is not rare to see times like 5-10 seconds.

Answer: 
DHCP might take a bit longer time because it involves a series of transactions, not with a single server but with all the devices on the network during the initial request, as it sends a broadcast message.

If you check the RFC for DHCP, 

<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2131.html>

you can clearly see the the series of negotiations involves. At the beginning the client sends DHCPDISCOVER to all the devices on the LAN, then the servers running dhcp service return DHCPOFFER message. The client might also wait to get responses from all available dhcp servers before it picks one. Then it sends a DHCPREQUEST with an identifier which indicates which server it has chosen as its ip provider. Finally it gets DHCPACK with all the configuration parameters. This is just a summary of the "3.1 Client-server interaction - allocating a network address" from the RFC.

From my experience dhcp takes long time mainly in large LAN setting with lots of nodes connected. In a homenetwork with just a single dhcp server(WIFI router for instance) and one or two pcs, it is pretty fast.
If you are experiencing performance problems with dhcp;

1. Check network latency
2. Look at packet cap dhcp negotiation. You should be able to see what action is taking a long time. (problem may not be with the dhcp server, who is waiting on who?)
3. Examine dhcp server load and logs.