Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:46873
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain wikimedia.org from 66.111.4.26 cause and error)
Message-ID: <4B5A75B4.1080403@wikimedia.org>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:06:12 +1100
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: steve <iamstever@gmail.com>
CC: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <4B4DABED.4060202@easyflirt.com>	 <e382ba1001130725k5095fcdcqb305d7b5043b70e8@mail.gmail.com>	 <4B4DF01A.1080103@wikimedia.org> <4B4DFBDE.1020906@lerdorf.com>	 <4B4E5943.3000706@wikimedia.org> <4B4E5D5B.9020805@zend.com>	 <4B4E6BE5.1070404@wikimedia.org> <4B4E79A6.2010904@zend.com>	 <4B4E8D15.60508@wikimedia.org>	 <57792e851001212136h12d7effaldeb75869808d8350@mail.gmail.com> <57792e851001221857m7954ee3ag4485d5cd695b6126@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <57792e851001221857m7954ee3ag4485d5cd695b6126@mail.gmail.com>
OpenPGP: id=BF976370
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] About optimization
From: tstarling@wikimedia.org (Tim Starling)

steve wrote:
>
> I don't think PHP has as much support as you think it does. There is
> no big supporter to fund a real development drive like that. 

I'd like to think that I've more or less worked out who supports PHP by
now. I know I don't go to many conferences but I haven't been living in
a cave these past 6 years.

> I doubt anyone does I1/D1/L2 cache profiling for PHP. 

I did a little bit of CPU cache profiling of PHP using oprofile, more
out of curiosity than anything. It was a couple of years ago now.

http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Oprofile

But you don't need oprofile, you can make changes based on theory, and
then measure the execution time of the result.

> PHP doesn't ship with an optimizer, byte code cache, or JIT. 

But community members are developing those things nonetheless.
eAccelerator has an optimizer, there are several so-called byte code
caches, and Roadsend is a promising compiler project. I think you're
underestimating the PHP community.

> Rasmus had the idea that it should
> do simple things and be easy, and if you were going to do anything
> else, then you should have the money to do so. Fair enough really.
>   

Rasmus is not the whole community. Sometimes community members have
spare time or the freedom to choose what they work on. I put these ideas
out on this list in the hopes that someone might be inspired by them.
Also it's nice to get feedback in case I decide to have a go at one of
them myself.

-- Tim Starling