PHP has announced a new development virtual machine, HipHop VM, which converts PHP code on-the-fly. This virtual machine will give a performance boost to the existing Hiphop technology.
Two years ago facebook had announced HipHop, a tool to convert code into native bytecode that is much faster to run. This is used in facebook and some other websites too. The code on the website is converted via HipHop compiler. The Php code that is ready to go on the website is compiled into binary form and then deployed. But it makes the code maintance harder.
Facebook also use a HipHop interpreter that converts code on the fly. This is too slow to use on the website but it’s better than using a compiler to compile every changes made in the code.
To make this easier, HipHop virtual machine comes in. It’s a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that has the benefits of producing fast code but also compiling on-the-fly. This machine will increase the speed 1.6 times.
Facebook is also planning to make this Virtual Machine available as an opensource tool so that every one can use it on their own website.
