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Latest version of PHP 7 vs HHVM multi-angle comparison, vshhvm_PHP tutorial
- WBOYOriginal
- 2016-07-12 08:59:151002browse
Latest version PHP 7 vs HHVM multi-angle comparison, vshhvm
PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages for web development. The latest version of PHP, PHP 7, has been greatly optimized in terms of performance. However, PHP also has a competitor, HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine) — a virtual tool that runs PHP code. Direct comparisons between the two are heating up, so let’s take a look at their direct performance comparison.
What is HHVM?
In 2008, Facebook initiated an effort to develop a tool to convert PHP scripts into C so that they could be compiled and run on a web server. The goal is to save server resources, an important goal because Facebook's user base is growing rapidly. In this sense, the project was successful, as it allowed the server to handle five to six times the request volume before.
Back in 2010, Facebook’s server requirements had increased a lot, and it was time to consider using new innovations to improve greater efficiency. Based on this need, Facebook developed HHVM.
HHVM uses Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation to convert PHP code into some kind of bytecode. Next, the bytecode is converted into machine code and optimized to make it run as fast as possible.
What is PHP 7?
PHP 7 is the PHP community’s response to HHVM. The preview version released by PHP 7 claims to have 100% performance improvement over the previous PHP 5.
You may ask whether the version of PHP jumped directly from PHP5 to PHP7. The answer is this: the development of PHP6 started in 2005, but its progress was too slow and many problems occurred, so PHP6 has not been released yet. It had a bad reputation before the official version. So the PHP community decided to directly name the new version of this language PHP7.
The real question is not a comparison between PHP5 and PHP7, as it is already obvious that PHP7 offers faster performance. But what we want to compare is PHP7 and HHVM. Many experts have used these two methods respectively to process PHP code and revealed some interesting conclusions.
Compare the similarities and differences between PHP7 and HHVM:
Before answering which one is better, let’s take a look at the key differences and similarities between them.
Code analysis:
The basic difference between PHP7 and HHVM is the way they parse PHP code. PHP7 uses the standard PHP parser, which is free software available to everyone and can be parsed and run directly on the server. It generates HTML code and then sends it to the client, which displays the content expected by the user.
In contrast, HHVM first converts PHP code into HipHop byte code, which is then translated into machine code and then executed. During this process, HHVM will optimize the code and optimize some PHP codes that affect execution efficiency, with the goal of improving running speed.
Write code:
Both the PHP parser and HHVM can receive PHP code and run it. The process of writing code this way is exactly the same. But if you want to use HHVM, you need to install HHVM on your server and then call it through the HHVM command from the command line.
Performance test:
HHVM provides faster performance than previous PHP versions. But recent performance tests suggest that PHP7 is slightly faster than HHVM, at least in some cases. Let’s take a look at the performance test results done by Kinsta:
WordPress: PHP7 running on WordPress 4.1.1 can perform more than twice the requests per second than PHP5.6, but not as many as HHVM3.6.1 provides. In the test, HHVM performed 624 requests per second while PHP7 only 604 executed.
Drupal: PHP7 can provide Drupal users with more obvious advantages than HHVM. The processing response efficiency of PHP7 on Drupal8 is more than 37 percentage points higher than that of HHVM.
Which companies use HHVM?
In addition to the FaceBook company that developed HHVM, many other companies have also adopted this solution and used HHVM to run PHP applications on the server, including Wikimedia and the e-commerce website Etsy.
Wikimedia: Wikimedia has a wealth of educational content, including the famous online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wikipedia attracts nearly 500 million Internet users every month. In order to meet such advanced needs, the performance of the server needs to be optimized. Compared with PHP, HHVM has a significant advantage. It can load multiple SPU cores at the same time, while PHP is A single-threaded language cannot be parallelized. After Wikipedia deployed HHVM, the CPU load dropped from 50% to 10%, the average response time when users submitted edits was reduced to half of the original, and the average page loading time dropped from the original 1.3 seconds to 0.9 seconds.
Etsy: Tesy, which has 54 million users, also urgently needs to improve server performance. Etsy engineers compared the performance of HHVM and PHP5.4 and found that HHVM can handle 280 server requests per second, while for PHP5.4 , if the number of requests per second exceeds 190, the server's response time will increase dramatically.
What is the future of PHP 7 and HHVM?
Since the stable version of PHP 7 will be released in November 2015, no company has yet used this new language. Since the beta version of PHP 7 performed well in benchmark tests, it will be able to attract more companies to use PHP 7 in the future. .
PHP has a bright future, but what about HHVM? It will probably continue to be alive and well. Many companies have already used HHVM in their websites to improve performance, and migrating between PHP and HHVM is not an overnight process. Etsy took at least 6 months. Since PHP7 offers only modest performance improvements over HHVM, those companies are unlikely to rush to switch to PHP.
Facebook will continue to develop HHVM. It recently announced support for Apple's operating system, making the technology available to developers working in Apple's development environment. The developers of HHVM believe that HHVM is faster than PHP7 in many cases, including WorldPress.
Why do HHVM and PHP 7 compete for online store owners?
As an online store owner, you need to decide whether to use PHP7 or HHVM based on the platform your online store is on. If your website is created with WorldPress, then you can take a look at the benchmark results of the latest version of HHVM and PHP 7. From the test results, you can find the difference in performance between the two, and then you can choose a solution to maximize Significantly reduce page load time, server response time and CPU usage.
Reasons for choosing HHVM
HHVM uses dynamic translation technology, which can provide higher performance in most cases (including WordPress).
HHVM can ensure that each request uses only a small amount of memory when processing a large number of requests.
HHVM developers are steadily increasing the amount of PHP code the engine can run, and it can already run the latest version of WorldPress, as well as other common PHP frameworks and applications.
HHVM is open source. Although HHVM was developed by Facebook, it is open source, which means anyone can use and modify its source code.
Reasons for choosing PHP 7
PHP 7 is faster than HHVM in some cases, including running Drupal 8.
Using PHP 7 does not require installation and setup of HHVM.
Although many PHP 4 features are no longer supported in the new version, code written in PHP 5 will work as expected after converting to PHP 7.
PHP 7 is developed by the PHP Community, a group of people with a long-standing reputation for developing stable and reliable versions of PHP.
HHVM vs. PHP 7: Make your choice
Don’t hesitate for too long, Kinsta recommends that those online websites try to choose between PHP 7 and HHVM, and start implementing solutions early to optimize your website performance. An ineffective website can also damage your reputation, which will be difficult to recover.
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