HHVM can handle higher requests per second, and faster response times for WordPress and Drupal sites, compared to PHP 7

Jun 18, 2015 14:10 GMT  ·  By

After a two-week long lockdown, the HHVM team emerged from their self-imposed isolation with new improvements to their engine which now outperforms even the newly released PHP 7 alpha branch.

A few weeks back, the Zend team announced serious speed improvements to the PHP 7 (PHPNG) engine which allowed it to considerably outperform HHVM in various setups.

Apparently, there was some truth to the original Zend report, but the HHVM team has responded with a benchmark of their own.

After putting their coders to work for two weeks, Facebook can now boast again that its HHVM technology, a JIT (Just-in-Time) compiler that converts PHP syntax to machine code, is faster than the default PHP engine, even in its newer 7.x branch.

WordPress, Drupal, and MediaWiki are faster on HHVM

According to the report, various setups were tested, with technologies like WordPress, Drupal, and MediaWiki used in a high-load server traffic environment.

The new HHVM branch managed to handle 1.8% more requests per second (RPS) for WordPress sites, and 19.4% more for MediaWiki, when compared to PHP7.

There was also a speed improvement for response times, of 10.2% for Drupal, 18.7% for WordPress, and 55.5% in the case of MediaWiki, when compared to PHP7.

While this firmly puts HHVM back on top as the best optimization tool for PHP code, the PHP7 team has not even gotten started, as their product is still an alpha-level technology and more improvements are certainly still being developed as we speak.

This is shaping up to be an interesting duel to keep your eye on, similar to the Couchbase and MongoDB squabble that's happening right now, constantly releasing benchmarks after benchmarks, and questioning their opposition's methodology.

That's not very professional on their part to say the least, but who cares. It's entertaining, and that's what counts, besides getting the job done and advancing the final product's quality by the end of the day.

HHVM outperforms PHP7 on Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki installs
HHVM outperforms PHP7 on Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki installs

HHVM vs PHP7 charts (3 Images)

HHVM is now faster than PHP7 and PHP5
HHVM outperforms PHP7 on Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki installsThe original Zend report that sparked the HHVM team's two-week lockdown
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