The performance of PHP is ultimately determined by the PHP interpreter itself. PHP is open source software written in the C programming language. Taking steps to make sure a fast binary is compiled is the first step to improving overall PHP performance.
Compiling PHP directly from source allows you to adjust compiler settings and functionality specific to your server environment. This can result in smaller PHP binaries & shared object files which are optimized to run on your system architecture.
The popularity of PHP has resulted in the availability of pre-compiled binaries across the myriad of operating systems in use today. Pre-compiled binaries are very convenient especially when setting up a development environment quickly; unfortunately they don’t allow you to squeeze out every drop of performance which is desired in production environments. The problem with pre-compiled binaries is that they include a lot of features that may not be required and might not be optimized optimally for your setup.
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