[usdfan]

Actually, very few workflows at film studios rely on batch renders these days. Far more important to artist productivity are interactive workflows - being able to work in context at scale in and between DCC's, and therefore load speed was actually a huge design consideration for usd, and integration of USD's gl imaging system, Hydra Stream, into workflows, has been a game changer for many interactive workflows. Check out the paragraph "Maximize artistic iteration by minimizing latency" on the USD website's front page... or better yet, actually try out USD (usdview) with a modern allocator like jemalloc (since both ingestion and imaging in usd extensively leverage multithreading).