A PHP accelerator is an extension designed to boost the performance of software applications written using the PHP programming language. Most PHP accelerators work by caching the compiledbytecode of PHP scripts to avoid the overhead of parsing and compiling source code on each request (some or all of which may never even be executed). For best performance, caching is to shared memory with direct execution from the shared memory and the minimum of memory copying at runtime. A PHP accelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of PHP code anywhere from 2–10 times, depending on factors such as the inherent execution time of the PHP application and the percentage of source code actually executed on a given request. While a codeoptimizer may even slow down overall performance when used in isolation, it can provide an additional performance boost when coupled with a code cache as the optimization effort is performed just once.
