Facebook Launches HipHop Virtual Machine for PHP
22.05.12
Facebook has introduced a new virtual
machine for PHP called the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) that it is sharing
with the development community.
In 2010, Facebook came out with HipHop
for PHP , a source code transformer, to help support the growing
number of Facebook users. PHP developers found that tool useful, and Facebook
will be making the new technology available as well. HHVM is 60 percent faster
than the current HipHop interpreter with a 90 percent reduction in memory
cost.
In a Dec. 9 blog post , Jason Evans, a software
engineer on Facebooks HipHop team, said, While HipHop has helped us make
significant gains in the performance of our code, its reliance on static
compilation makes optimizing our code time consuming. We were also compelled to
develop a separate PHP interpreter (HPHPI) that requires a lot of effort to
maintain. So, early last year, we put together a small team to experiment with
dynamic translation of PHP code into native machine code. What followed
is a new PHP execution engine based on the HipHop language runtime
that we call the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM). We're excited to report that
Facebook is now using HHVM as a faster replacement for the original HipHop
interpreter (HPHPI), with plans to eventually use HHVM for all PHP execution.
Source: eWeek