The Small World Of PHP Engines

Every PHP developer know the PHP Engine from Zend, and certainly the one from Facebook HHVM. But did you know that it exists almost a dozen of alternatives PHP engines ?

This talk is a trip around the small world of PHP engines, to discover new horizons from the engines made on JVM to the ones that compile PHP directly to binary, and even an embedded one for IoT.

Transcript

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2. What's a PHP Engine?
   Anything that can run PHP code
   

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3. Why Creating a PHP
   Engine?
   

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4. 1. To Increase Performances
   

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5. 2. To Attract some parts of
   the biggest web dev
   ecosystem
   

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6. Let's go on a trip!
   

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7. The Civilized Territories
   

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8. The Zend Engine
   by
   official PHP Engine
   appeared first in PHP 4
   Zend Engine III for PHP
   7
   

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9. Zend Engine: How it works
   Execution Time
   PHP Code
   ⬇ compiled to
   Op Code
   ▶ executed by
   Zend VM
   ▶ executed by
   Processor
   

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10. HHVM
    Hip Hop Virtual Machine
    by
    Perfomances = $$$$$$$
    

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11. HHVM: How it works
    Execution Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Op Code
    ▶ compiled by JIT to
    Machine Code
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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12. The Binary Compilers
    Back to the roots!
    

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13. Roadsend PHP
    Direct compiler from PHP to native
    binaries
    Started in 2007, abandonned in 2012
    www.roadsend.com
    

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14. Roadsend PHP
    How it works
    Compilation Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Machine Code in
    Native Binaries
    Execution Time
    Machine Code from
    Native Binaries
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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15. Hip Hop PHP
    by
    Performances!
    Transpile PHP to C++
    Superseded by HHVM (Hip Hop VM), as not dynamic
    enough (no eval)
    

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16. Hip Hop PHP
    How it works
    Compilation Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ transpiled to
    C++ Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Machine Code in
    Native Binaries
    Execution Time
    Machine Code from
    Native Binaries
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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17. The Perl Lost World
    

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18. Perl, What's that?
    Used to be the most popular language for the Web (made
    CGI popular!) around 2000s
    System and development oriented
    Still used a lot as "ops" language
    apt-get, dpkg
    rpm
    

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19. Introducing Perl 6
    

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20. Building Perl 6 VM
    

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21. "Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic
    languages."
    Implementations started for 38 languages, included: Java,
    Lua, Brainfuck, C, Python, Ruby, Perl 6, .... , PHP
    Proudly still in development since 2000
    www.parrot.org
    

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22. Pipp: Pipp is Parrot's PHP
    Part of the all dynamic languages
    effort
    Last commit: 8 years ago
    github.com/bschmalhofer/pipp
    

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23. How Pipp works
    Execution Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Parrot Code
    ▶ executed by
    Parrot VM
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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24. The Java Land
    

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25. Quercus
    "So using PHP with Grails is a quick and painless
    endeavor."
    Java class usage and Unicode compliance
    provide Zend standard exts (cURL, PDO, ...)
    One of the rare alt PHP Engine able to run full
    applications (Drupal, Wikimedia)
    Unfortunately, not actively maintained
    quercus.caucho.com
    $string = new java.lang.StringBuffer("Unicode string ✈");
    

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26. Quercus: How it works
    Execution Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ transpiled to
    Java Code
    ▶ compiled by javac to
    Byte Code
    ▶ executed by
    JVM
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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27. JPHP
    Benefits properly from the JVM
    JIT
    Debug via the xdebug protocol
    1.1x faster than PHP 7
    Wants to allow PHP on Android
    Don't provide Zend standard exts
    Active but not a lot of contributors
    

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28. JPHP samples: Multithreading
    $thread = new Thread(function () {
    $i = 0;
    while (true) {
    $i++;
    echo $i, "\n";
    sleep(2); // every 2 seconds
    }
    });
    $thread->start(); // start thread
    

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29. JPHP samples: UI
    $form = new UIForm();
    $form->size = [600, 300];
    $form->title = 'My Program';
    $button = new UIButton();
    $button->text = 'Click Me';
    $button->on('click', function(MouseEvent $e) {
    UIDialog::message('Hello World');
    });
    $form->add($button);
    $form->show();
    

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30. JPHP
    How it works
    Compilation Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Byte Code
    Execution Time
    Byte Code
    ⬇ compiled by JIT to
    Machine Code
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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31. View Slide

32. The Snake Country
    

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33. HippyVM
    started at
    uses (JIT inside)
    Not actively maintained anymore
    

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34. HippyVM Performances
    

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35. HippyVM: How it works
    Execution Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ transpiled by HippyVM to
    RPython
    ▶ compiled by PyPy JIT into
    Machine Code
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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36. MS World
    

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37. Phalanger
    "improves the performance, allows to use modern
    environments ... compiles legacy PHP code"
    Not maintained anymore
    phalanger.codeplex.com
    

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38. Phalanger: how it works
    Compilation Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Common
    Intermediary
    Language
    Execution Time
    Common Intermediary
    Language Code
    ⬇ compiled by .Net JIT to
    Machine Code
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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39. PeachPie
    Superseds Phalanger
    Benefits from the Roslyn compiler platform
    Target PHP 7.1 syntax
    First item in the FAQ:"PHP sucks, why port this
    horrendous language to .NET?"
    www.peachpie.io
    

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40. PeachPie Benchmarks
    

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41. PeachPie: how it works
    Compilation Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Common
    Intermediary
    Language
    Execution Time
    Common Intermediary
    Language Code
    ⬇ compiled by .Net JIT to
    Machine Code
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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42. The Land of the Little Ones
    

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43. PH7 - The Embedded PHP Engine
    Build for real embedded hardware
    Embedded VM similar to Zend VM
    Dedicated to IoT and home routers
    ph7.symisc.net
    

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44. PH7 - Distinctive Features
    Full type hinting
    Native UTF-8 support.
    Function arguments can take any complex expressions as
    their default values.
    "Correct and consistent implementation of the ternary
    operator."
    echo (true?'true':false?'t':'f');
    

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45. PH7 code sample
    #define PHP_PROG ""echo 'Welcome guest'.PHP_EOL;"\
    "echo 'Current system time is: '.date('Y-m-d H:i:s').PHP_EOL;"\
    "echo 'and you are running '.php_uname();?>"
    #include
    #include
    #include "ph7.h"
    int main(void) {
    ph7 *pEngine;
    ph7_vm *pVm;
    ph7_init(&pEngine);
    ph7_compile_v2(pEngine, PHP_PROG, -1 &pVm, 0);
    ph7_vm_exec(pVm,0);
    }
    

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46. PH7 - How it works
    Compilation Time
    C code with PHP code
    inside
    ⬇ compiled to
    Machine Code with PHP
    code inside
    Execution Time
    Machine code with PHP
    Code inside
    ⬇ PHP code compiled
    to
    Op Code
    ▶ executed by
    Embedded VM
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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47. The Rusted Land
    

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48. Tagua VM
    Written in Rust
    Security Focused: Safety First!
    Benefits from the LLVM
    platform
    github.com/tagua-vm/tagua-vm
    

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49. Tagua VM - How it works
    Execution Time
    PHP Code
    ⬇ compiled to
    Op Code
    ▶ executed by
    Tagua VM
    ▶ executed by
    Processor
    

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50. The Future?
    JIT on Zend Engine
    Implemented as part of opcache
    Uses LLVM as backend
    github.com/zendtech/php-src/tree/zend-
    jit/ext/opcache/jit
    

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51. Conclusion
    That's a big world out there!
    The Leaders
    Zend Engine
    HHVM
    The
    Challengers
    Peache Pie
    Tagua VM
    

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52. Thank you!
    Questions?
    

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