One way to improve cpu-bound performance is to switch to something like HipHop for PHP [1], which compiles PHP down to C++ and runs that. Granted, this incurs

One way to improve cpu-bound performance is to switch to something like HipHop for PHP [1], which compiles PHP down to C++ and runs that. Granted, this incurs a non-trivial switching cost. However, it's scary to me that someone is suggesting the potentially fatal-inducing use of "require" over "require_once" (if you call it twice on the same file, you end up re-defining whatever classes or methods were required and the script dies). It seems like optimizing for developer time and simplicity over cpu utilization is better here. Using HipHop would incur a one-time operational cost, but I suspect it would be worth the additional developer and speed gains. [1]: https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/ https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/wiki/