This doesn't seem to replace PHP whatsoever. I thought PHP didn't run as CGI, shelling to a separate program with every request. It runs, in nearly all install

This doesn't seem to replace PHP whatsoever. I thought PHP didn't run as CGI, shelling to a separate program with every request. It runs, in nearly all installations, as a plugin, saving the overhead of spawning a new program. That's just one of the many reasons it did so well back it the day because it allowed a server to handle far more requests than CGI based stuff.