wiki:apc_cache

Version 1 (modified by Jamie McClelland, 15 years ago) (diff)

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PHP Optimizing software (APC

May First/People Link is currently (2008-12-17) experimenting with the Alternative PHP Cache PHP optimizer.

If successful, APC will be enabled on all shared servers.

Normally, everytime a user requests a PHP file on a web server, the server has to "compile" the php script - which means translate it into code that the processor can execute. This compilation process can be CPU intensive on busy machines. APC stores compiled PHP files in memory and re-serves the compiled files rather than re-compiling them for every request. This approach saves a lot of CPU time, making the scripts run faster.

There are two good articles on the success of APC with Drupal sites: One by Jeffg and another on 2bits.

In addition, I've found a couple references to segfaults caused by APC and PHP, which we should be wary of.