The PHP opcode generated by the PHP engine is strongly influenced by the way you write your code. Not only in terms of the number of statements to accomplish a task. Clearly it matters a lot, and I think it’s obvious to you.
What could be less obvious is that even the syntax of the code can completely change the generated opcode causing a lot of overhead for the machine’s CPU to execute the exact same code.
In the last few years my SaaS product has grown a lot, and it has given me the opportunity to go deeper and deeper into the optimization techniques to run my workload as efficiently as possible.
The results I saw are impressive and helped me a lot in unlocking free cash flow to continue developing my SaaS journey.
At this point the PHP process inside my SaaS product is processing more than 1.2 billion (with B) data packets every day on a machine with 2vCPU and 8GB of memory. I use an AWS autoscaling group to have more flexibility in case of unpredictable spikes, but it rarely adds a second machine (one/two times a week).
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Recently I also wrote about the migration of the Inspector servers to ARM instances:
PHP opcode caching
Caching the PHP opcode allows you to save three steps in the process of executing the code: Parsing the raw PHP code, Tokenization, and Compilation.
Once the opcode is generated for the first time it is stored in memory so it can be reused in subsequent requests. This reduces the need for the PHP engine to recompile the same PHP code every time it’s executed, saving a lot of CPU and memory consumption.
The most commonly used opcode cache in PHP is is a popular PHP extension that disassembles compiled PHP code and outputs the opcode. It’s a powerful tool for understanding how PHP interprets and executes your code.Once installed you can run a PHP script with VLD enabled by using the php command with -d options:
php -d vld.active=1 -d vld.execute=0 yourscript.php
The output will include detailed information about the compiled opcode, including each operation, its associated line of code, and more.
Use 3v4l (Acronym for EVAL)
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