Why You May Want to Try a PHP Accelerator

One of the downfalls of any scripted, uncompiled language is that it is going to run slower than if the code were compiled. While that may not even be perceivable, it still takes up extra system resources which you could need to allocate to something else. If the scripted program is large and complex enough, it could take it a while to chug through the interpreter and spit out the appropriate code. Now, if you run this script several times throughout the day, that's extra processing power and memory you're taking up, and over time that could add up to quite a bit of wasted power. Add that up with all of the other scripts you're running for a website, and you've consumed even more.

Since PHP is obviously a scripting language, it suffers from this problem of chewing up resources every time it is run, but developers have a solution! A PHP accelerator stores the compiled version of the script after it is run, and from then on, it runs the cached version while skipping the compilation.

Why eAccelerator is a Good PHP Accelerator

eAccelerator is a free, open source accelerator that supports PHP 4 through PHP 5.2. It is a fork project of the Turck MMCache project, and was created in late 2004. Not only does it act as a standard accelerator, it also functions as a code optimizer, so it can analyze what you've written to determine ways to increase the speed before it caches it. All of which it does well.

The eAccelerator website also offers forums, mailing lists, an IRC channel, and documentation on its website for support. If you're looking for a way to save on resources, give eAccelerator a try, and it might surprise you with what it can do.

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