Vincenzo Petrucci

What if PHP didn't need an interpreter to run?

No PHP installation.
No external runtime dependencies.
Just a native executable.

Meet Elephc 🐘

PHP compiled to native machine code. Built in Rust.

elephc.dev

36.8 s → 4.0 s.

Same PHP code. One merged elephc PR (#2338), driven by hot paths from a real project:

- 1,000 hash removals: 60 ms → ~0.05 ms (no cycle collection after unsetting scalars)
- foreach over a hash of objects: 1,000 allocations → 0
- $x === null guards: 10,000 allocations → 0
- GC now budgeted by heap size, like PHP's root buffer

19–29x faster than PHP. With OPcache + JIT on.

Results are in. elephc's official CI, PHP 8.5 with opcache + tracing JIT:

• sum_loop: 58.8 ms → 3.0 ms
• array_sum: 56.8 ms → 2.9 ms
• string_concat: 58.5 ms → 2.0 ms

Whole-process time, startup included. A native binary has nothing to boot.

C is in the chart too 👀

The #1 reply to yesterday's benchmark: "Now turn on OPcache and JIT."

Fair. So we did.

Every PHP baseline in elephc's CI now runs with:
• opcache.enable_cli=1
• opcache.jit=tracing
• jit_buffer_size=128M

And a probe checks the JIT is really on. If not, CI fails.

PHP at full speed vs native code. Results tomorrow.

Your guess: does the gap shrink, stay, or grow? 👇

PHP syntax. Native binary. ~20x faster than PHP.

elephc vs PHP 8.5 vs C, official CI:
sum_loop: 2.7 / 50.8 / 1.8 ms
array_sum: 2.4 / 52.8 / 2.2 ms
string_concat: 2.3 / 52.0 / 3.2 ms

Whole process, startup included.

What should we benchmark next?