Posted by Jeremy on 01/08/08 00:43

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Jeremy wrote:
>> every cycle saved on redundantly compiling PHP code is a cycle that
>> can be used doing useful computation.
>
> Er.. what planet are YOU on?
>
> Unless you are totally CPU bound, most of the time your processor is
> doing precisely nothing. Thats why its imporatnt to wortk out what teh
> bottleneck is. Boosting CPU power may have as much effect as fitting a
> turbocharger to a car that spends all its time in a traffic jam..
>
>
>
>> NOT running a bytecode cache is pretty pointless. Why not do it?
>>
>
> Because it may make no difference whatsoever. And adds more complexity.
>
>> Jeremy
>>

So, you're saying it doesn't make any sense to eliminate the compilation
step on every request? That the request will be handled just as fast if
many thousands of lines of code must be compiled first?

Whatever planet I'm on, I want to move to yours - because computers
there seem to be magical.

Let's look at some benchmark tests:

http://2bits.com/articles/benchmarking-apc-vs-eaccelerator-using-drupal.html

In this particular case, adding APC resulted in a ~494% increase in
performance over PHP alone. Maybe that's a result of Drupal being
poorly written - couldn't tell you; I've never used it. But it seems
like something that could potentially be pretty helpful, so I suggested
he try it. I use it everywhere; it requires no maintenance, it installs
in seconds, it has concretely improved the performance of my
applications, and my servers have never crashed (with the exception of
occasional fan failures) or required restarts. Anecdotally, I would say
it's a pretty good thing to consider.

Jeremy

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