Now that Facebook made some progress with their PHP HipHop VM JIT compiler engine, some PHP core developers are considering having also a JIT compiler implementation of the official implementation based on LLVM, eventually in PHP 6. [...] They also commented on the first alpha release of PHP 5.5.0, proposals for having pure interfaces in the PHP core, the Facebook PHP JIT compiler enhancements, and the new system of levels and missions of the PHPClasses and JSClasses sites.

You can listen to this latest episode either through their in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed. You can also watch the video of the recording as well.

JIT compilation is the main topic of the episode 19 of the Lately in PHP podcast presented by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert who received as guests Miloslav Beno of the Phalanger team and Nuno Lopes of the PECL LLVM project to discuss this and other interesting topics of the PHP scene.

The hosts and their guests talk about compiling PHP, things that happened in 2011 and look forward to what's to come in the world of PHP in 2012. You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to the podcast feed.

According to our sources, Facebook has been working on a PHP compiler that will increase speed by around 80% and offer a just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine that will offer a number of advantages. The project is very similar to Google's Unladen Swallow project, which rebuilt the Python compiler, boosting the speed fivefold and opening the door for multi-language integration.

Included are also some comments from Richard Crowley about what Facebook could be releasing, a compiler that would still allow PHP to remain interpreted but provide the speed of being compiled. Some of the comments on the post wonder how something like this compiler compares to an opcode cache and doubts on whether it will end up being open sourced at all.

You can also get another opinion on what will be released in this article from the All Facebook blog. They reinforce that the announcement will come today and how much potential something like this could have to change what PHP could become.

Phalanger is a new PHP implementation introducing the PHP language into the family of compiled .NET languages. [...] Phalanger compiles PHP scripts into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) which can be executed by .NET or Mono runtime.

He mentions some of the features of the tool (including interoperability between .NET and PHP and the ability to use current PHP libraries inside the .NET application). More information can be found on the Phlanger website.

JIT (just in time) compilation is, according to Wikipedia, a method for converting, at runtime, code from one format into another, for example bytecode into native machine code. To try to see the benefit of this, Jacob asks four questions in his post (each with their own problems):

• Q: What advantage over opcode caching is gained?
  P: A JIT library that works with PHP would have to support all of the architectures that PHP can run on!
• Q: Which JIT library is the best one?
  P: A JIT compiler is not going to achieve anything without either storing the results or caching them.
• Q: Wouldn't writing PHP extensions negate the need for JIT compilation?
• Q: When will I develop and release my implementation?