Zend Optimizer

Q: What is the Zend Optimizer? What does it do?

A: The Zend Optimizer goes over the intermediate code generated by the standard Zend run-time compiler and optimizes it for faster execution. In addition, the Zend Optimizer enables PHP to load and execute files encoded by the Zend Encoder.

Q: Why use the Zend Optimizer; isn't PHP 4 supposed to be quite fast already?

A: The standard Zend run-time compiler used by PHP 4 is indeed extremely fast, generating code that is usually 2 to 10 times faster than the equivalent code in PHP 3. But an application that uses the Zend Optimizer typically executes another 40% to 100% faster.

Q: What version of PHP does the current Zend Optimizer work with?

A: The current version of the Zend Optimizer works only with PHP 4.0.5 and above that is compiled without debug support (the default configuration of the standard PHP package). You can test if your PHP is non-debug by viewing the output of phpinfo() function. PHP is available at http://www.zend.com/zend/download-php.php or http://www.php.net/downloads.php.

Q: What platforms does the Zend Optimizer support?

A: For Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows, IBM AIX and HP-UX. For details, see http://www.zend...imizer.php.

Q: Will the Zend Optimizer be ported to platform X?

A: We are getting closer and closer. We have recently added Mac OS X and Solaris x86 platforms. We are trying to support the most popular web server platforms. We may re-evaluate our policy if we see there is sufficient demand for platform X.