It may be just my lack of familiarity with the PHP / Zend, but it seems like one of the most significant things that HHVM achieved was a wake-up call to Zend.

It may be just my lack of familiarity with the PHP / Zend, but it seems like one of the most significant things that HHVM achieved was a wake-up call to Zend. It seemed like they suddenly started putting some serious effort in to PHP7's runtime, and publicising what they were doing. A bit of a wake-up call to a language that was languishing for performance.