Alternative PHP RuntimesAttila-Mihaly Balazs

it-events.ro javaadvent.com

● Short introduction / methodology● The standard interpreter

○ opcode caches● Facebook's HHVM● Caucho Resin● IIS + PHP● IIS + Phalanger● Other projects● Benchmark results● Conclusions

Agenda

● Quad-core i7 VM + 1G RAM● Ubuntu 12.10 (12.04), Windows 7 Pro● time php bench.php● Mirror of transylvania-jug.org (Wordpress 3.4.2) + MariaDB / MySQL

○ ab -n100 -c2 /○ pre-warm for JITed systems

What I might have done wrong:● VMs are unreliable for timing● inadequate hardware? different OSs?● Apache? prefork? fastcgi? nginx? lighthttpd?● non-realistic traffic patterns● database (connection, query parsing, etc) may dominate

... treat this as one-more datapoint

Methodology

Highlights● Easy to use● Available on a wide variety of platforms● Compatibility

Two-step execution process:● parsing + include resolution > opcodes● opcode interpretation

Done on every request (!)

Obvious optimization: cache the result of the first step and reuse it as long as the files don't change. Extensions implementing this:● APC● XCache● eAcceleartor● ZendServer● WinCache*

The standard PHP interpreter

Highlights● readily packaged● supported platforms: *nix● free● only supports a subset of PHP / extensions

Multiple phases of development since early 2010:● HPHPc > PHP to C++ compiler, uses GCC for binary generation● HPHPi● HHVM - uses JIT

Facebook's HHVM

Highlights:● cross platform (pure Java)● free (with for-pay version available)● advanced features provided by container (like DB connection pooling)● only a (large) subset of extensions reimplemented● tight integration with Java● you should know about .war's, WEB-INF, etc

Caucho Resin

Highlights:● Show me the money!● Don't use IIS Express or WebPI for production● More complicated / less documented setup● Access to Windows-specific features (COM, .NET, AD)● Should have similar performance to *nix > if not, investigate (DNS

lookup issues)

Phalanger● PHP in .NET● OSS● Can use native extensions! (but most are reimplemented in .NET)● you should know about web.config, GACs, etc

IIS 7.5

● TalariaTech● php-llvm● phpc● HippyVM● PHP.js● Roadsend and Roadsend-Raven● Pipp● PHP4Mono● Project Zero / sMash

Other projects

Benchmark results

Platform bench.php execution time (seconds)

ApacheBench execution time (seconds)

PHP 5.4.6 2.3 15

PHP 5.4.6 with APC 3.1.13 2.3 7.0

PHP 5.4.6 with XCache 2.0.0 2.3 9.0

PHP 5.4.6 with eAccelerator (dev-04-2012)

2.3 6.5

Zender Server CE 5.6.0 3.3 6.9

Hip-Hop VM 1.201212 3.2 8.0

Caucho Resin 4.0.32 GPL 5.4 9.2

IIS 7.5 with PHP 5.4.9 / WinCache 1.3.4

2.4 8.0

IIS 7.5 with Phalanger 3.0 2.5 9.4

● No silver bullet● Minimal setup: PHP + opcode cache (APC / eAccelerator)● Use the alternatives for reasons different than speed (for ex. integration)

● Speedup with WordPress caching plugin: >80x (0.08 seconds vs. 6.5 seconds)

Conclusions

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