This document compares the performance of PHP 5.6, PHP 7.0, and HHVM, highlighting the significant improvements in speed and memory usage with PHP 7.0. The benchmark tests conducted using a Symfony2 application show that PHP 7.0 is the fastest, followed by HHVM and PHP 5.6. The author recommends targeting PHP 7.x for future projects due to its enhanced features and efficiency.

1. Performance Comparison of
PHP 5.6 vs. 7.0 vs HHVM
Jani Tarvainen - April 20th 2016

2. About me - Jani Tarvainen
• Working on the web professionally from 2000 in various roles in
development, support operations, management and consulting
• By day I help people build the web at eZ Systems
• By night I do things at Malloc for fun/profit
• On Twitter: @velmu

3. PHP performance lately
• PHP 5.6
• Opcode cache built in (since 5.5)
• HHVM 3.x
• Increased performance
• Facebook's own Hacklang for features
• PHP 7.0
• Increased performance and more efficient memory use
• New PHP language features

4. Compatibility
• All three are are solid for production use
• Symfony achieves 100% PHP7 compatibility
• Symfony 2.3 achieves 100% HHVM compatibility
• PHP 7 feature support in HHVM

5. Benchmark case
• Done using a full Symfony2 framework application - eZ Platform demo
• A few page loads and REST API calls used
• Tests done on dedicated VPSes, repeated 3 times and averages
reported
• Details: Symfony Benchmarks: PHP 5.6, HHVM 3.11 and PHP 7.0.1

6. Benchmark case - Frontpage

7. Benchmark case - Top Stories

8. Benchmark case - Projects

9. Benchmark case - REST API Call

10. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Frontpage
with empty runtime and Symfony caches

11. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Frontpage with
empty runtime and Symfony caches

12. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Top Stories
page

13. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Top Stories
page

14. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Projects page

15. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Projects page

16. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Frontpage

17. Memory usage and Response Time - Load Frontpage

18. Requests served per second - Frontpage
without Symfony Reverse Proxy

19. Requests served per second - Frontpage with
Symfony Reverse Proxy

20. Requests served per second - API without
Symfony Reverse Proxy

21. Requests served per second - API with
Symfony Reverse Proxy

22. Conclusions
• From a standing start HHVM can be the slowest (JIT)
• HHVM beats PHP 5.6 in memory usage and throughput
• PHP 7.0 is the fastest and uses a significantly than 5.6 or HHVM less
memory
• When you've got a lot of template processing, etc. the difference
between HHVM and PHP 7.0 closes down, compared to that of the
API calls

23. Adoption
• Prebuilt HHVM packages for Ubuntu, Debian
• PHP 7.0 available for CentOS/RHEL, Debian
• Containers (Docker, etc.) makes runtime packaging easier
• PHP 7.0 is default in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, release tomorrow (April 21st)

24. What should I use?
• PHP 5.6 is super safe
• HHVM can be a boost for non PHP 7-compatible apps and Hacklang
features
• PHP 7.x is the future, I suggest targeting it
• Some PHP 7 polyfills available: New in Symfony 2.8: Polyfill
Components

25. ...PHP-PM and PHPFastCGI?
• Traditionally PHP boots up from scratch
• PHP-PM and PHPFastCGI Running PHP as long running processes
• High performance, but introduce memory leak worries, etc
• Still work in progress, but stabilising
• Details: PHP-FPM vs. PHP-PM (on PHP 7 and HHVM)

26. Frontpage without Symfony Reverse Proxy

27. API without Symfony Reverse Proxy

28. Cool Links
• Symfony Benchmarks: Introduction
• How Badoo saved one million dollars switching to PHP7
• Migrating from PHP 5.6.x to PHP 7.0.x
• Wikipedia on HHVM
• Running Symfony Applications with PHP-PM or PHPFastCGI
• PHP High-Performance - Follow Up with Symfony/Jarves.io and PHP-
PM
• Things to consider when developing an application with PHPFastCGI

29. Questions?
• Thank you!
• http://symfony.fi/php-hhvm