afterburner*CACHE

precompile php code into binaries and speed up script execution

[konduct]

for those of you developing php applications, i highly recommend the use of the free and open-source afterburner*CACHE php plugin. it precompiles php code into binary executables. the performance advantage is obvious. think of the difference between interpreted languages and compiled languages.

with afterburner zero time is spend on interpreting the php code at run time. php starts executing the binary executable code instantly. many users report speed improvements up to 40%. on heavily loaded machines, this means a significant increase in the maximum number of simultaneous web clients. even for shorter scripts that are heavy on php classes referenced from files outside your script itself.

not sure if it is OK to post the URL, but a quick google for "afterburner*CACHE" as of 7:58PM PST on 06-17-2003 should point you directly to it with the #1 result. i personally tested afterburner*CACHE with very positive results. jeremy zawodny from Yahoo! Finance gives it a thumbs up in his PHP presentations.

[jatar_k]

successfully tested on PHP 4.0.5 and PHP 4.1.1

so not for anyone who uses up to date php. It also seems to still be in beta.

Site doesn't really offer any information, last version released Feb 14 2002.

reserving judgement.

[Xuefer]

it shouldn't be called "binaries executable"
exactly, there's
1. op code
zend 4, and also phpa
2. machine code
c/c++ ...

afterburner is op code, what it does is only to cache op code, not even optimize the opcode

there isn't an a php compiler that compile script into machine code(binary), is there?
i'd be glad to have one

[Lisa]

I think the Zend Crew either said they had one or were planning to have one. I am looking now... wow, PHP5 planned. Anyway this is what I found on the site...

With standard PHP every time a PHP script is accessed, the script is parsed and compiled by the Zend engine before it is executed. The Zend Accelerator, from the creators of the Zend engine, tightly integrates with the Zend engine and caches the PHP script in a post-compilation state. The next time the script is called, Zend Accelerator serves the cached code and the compilation process is saved.

So looks like they have an accelerator. Not open source, but if you need PHP to run ubber fast I am sure you can pay for a copy.

[konduct]

I successfully tested afterburner*CACHE on FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE with Apache 1.3.27 and PHP/4.2.3, Jatar_K. Both the threaded and unthreaded versions. We have a few machines that have been running abcache with 15,000+ hits/day and we have had zero problems so far, looking good!

Now I understand the relation between binary executable vs. op code, Xuefer. The abcache website does not make that distinction. Thank you for clarifying.

There is a tarball with source-code available on the afterburner*CACHE website, Lisa. I have a feeling this is a very similar codebase to the ionCube encoder. Would someone care to chime in with benchmarks of these precompilers and caching php plugins?

[Xuefer]

you're welcome, konduct

it seems taht abcache do only "cache" job, so the source code is small, and easy to maintain, and thus have few bugs and stable
this maybe the reason it compat with php latest version, 4.2.3

yet, phpa is also a good cacher+optimizer.
as its author said: up to now, phpa has no core dump