4 Expected Features of New PHP 7 That Promise Faster Web Performance

Riya Ghosh | January 1, 2016 | Web Development | No Comments

The PHP development team is back with PHP 7.0 version update after a hiatus. This new version release is supposed to be the biggest update since its last release of version 5.0 in the year 2004.

The PHP is a web development server-side scripting language, which can also be used as a programming language for general purpose.

The new 7.0 version promises low memory usage and faster response time, leading to faster website performance and better web services.

In addition to this, the version introduces the Zend engine that brings tons of improvement for the benefit of the website.

Some of the improvements that the new PHP 7.0 offers are as follows –

Speedy performance
Reduced memory usage
Consistent 64-bit support
Abstract syntax tree
Conversion of fatal errors into exceptional results
New and improved exception hierarchy
Removal of unsupported and old extensions and SAPIs
Secured generation of random numbers
Declaration of Return and Scalar type
Zero cost asserts
Anonymous classes

Rasmus Lerdorf, who is the founder of this popular server side scripting language, promises a 100 percent speed up compared to the older version. With the upgrade, you could expect to experience the same speed performance even after turning off the upgrade. It is the PHPNG codebase that will be working as the basis for the new PHP version.

One of the most striking reasons why everyone one of us look forward to a new version is because of the features that make it different from the previous one. With new features, comes new boost in performance and PHP 7 is no short of that.

New Features to Expect From PHP 7.0

#1 – JIT Engine

The development of the PHPNG was initiated in-order to carry a research based on the implementation of the Zend Engine based PHP JIT engine.

Using the JIT engine can help to dynamically compile the Zend opcodes and turn them into native machine codes. This would eventually make the make the code to run faster. The JIT engine had not been planned in the PHPNG branch. However, plans to implement the JIT engine in PHP 7 has been in the minds of the Zend.

#2 – Performances

Speaking of speed performances, the improvement of the PHPNG in PHP 7 has been implemented in areas such as memory allocation and hash tables. The technology has brought about 35 percent improvement in speed on synthetic tests, 20 to 70 percent improvement in speed on real applications, 60 percent improvement of the WordPress home pages and better memory consumption capacity of most the useful API servers.

The technology can support most of the PHP extensions that are bundled into the PHP source distribution. It can also provide sufficient speed that is comparable to the open source virtual machine of HHVM 3.3.0.

#3 – Abstract Syntax Tree

This is another feature that enable the PHP to run faster. By exposing the AST to PHP userland applications and extensions, one could open the space to allow usage of more interesting tools. Some of these tools include static code analyzers that are capable of detecting bugs and can welcome potential level of source optimization to the PHP code.

#4 – Standalone Multi-thread Web Server

This is a scalable feature of PHP 7. It is present in the HHVM and can run as a standalone multi-thread web server.

This can allow social sites like Facebook to reduce their usage of the number of server machines that are generally needed to handle traffic load. With a multi threaded web server, sites can handle simultaneous number of requests with the help of a single memory pool. This can avoid wastage of memory that happens while running in Apache pre-fork mode or PHP as FastCGI.

The above-expected PHP 7 features surely promise to make the web a whole lot better than before.

However, adapting to this new version would take some more years before a considerable number of web services and sites would get used to it. If you want to learn more about the new PHP version, then you can visit this page to get started or maybe seek help on how to make your application development reach the next level.

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Riya Ghosh

Riya Ghosh is a content writer by profession and loves to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in web development and digital marketing. Apart from this, she enjoys writing crime fictions and dreams of setting her own publication house one day.

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