Why php array gets slower with newer php versions, and how to go around that?

Question

I have a php based system working perfectly since 2006, which has a backend (CLI, cron) process, processing millions of records, using a big tree-like structure in memory.

I've noticed great performance regressions when upgrading a debian machine.

So, to research the issue, I wrote a simple script, and downloaded a dozen xampp releases, and run the same script with the different php versions.

$start=microtime(true);
$n=10;
$counter=1;
$testarray=Array();

for ($i[1]=0;$i[1]<$n;$i[1]++) 
  for ($i[2]=0;$i[2]<$n;$i[2]++) 
    for ($i[3]=0;$i[3]<$n;$i[3]++) 
      for ($i[4]=0;$i[4]<$n;$i[4]++) 
        for ($i[5]=0;$i[5]<$n;$i[5]++) 
          for ($i[6]=0;$i[6]<$n;$i[6]++) 
            for ($i[7]=0;$i[7]<$n;$i[7]++) 
              $testarray[$i[1]][$i[2]][$i[3]][$i[4]][$i[5]][$i[6]][$i[7]]=$counter++;

$end=microtime(true);
echo "PHP ".phpversion()." ".round(memory_get_peak_usage(true)/(1024*1024),2)." mbyte max ram, ".round($end-$start,2)." seconds\r\n";

I run the same script against xampp win32 1.6.0a through win32 1.7.7-vc9, with the following results:

 - PHP 5.2.1 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.43 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.1 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.37 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.2 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.43 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.3 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.38 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.4 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.5 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.5 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.28 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.5 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.31 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.6 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.52 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.6 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.54 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.8 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.72 seconds
 - PHP 5.2.9 890.25 mbyte max ram, 12.53 seconds
 - PHP 5.3.0 975.5 mbyte max ram, 18.28 seconds
 - PHP 5.3.1 975.5 mbyte max ram, 18.06 seconds
 - PHP 5.3.5 975.5 mbyte max ram, 18.49 seconds
 - PHP 5.3.8 975.5 mbyte max ram, 17.97 seconds
 - PHP 5.3.8 975.5 mbyte max ram, 18.11 seconds

Notes: - I don't use xampp or windows on servers, but this was the easiest way to test through different versions at once. - I tried to google for this problem a few times, but didn't get any relevant results - The speed loss is about the same (50% longer runtime) on the servers - I don't think that a slowdown of this kind is acceptable from any framework or compiler, - even in spite of new features the old ones should work just as well as before. I can't tell my boss, that the same computer with the same software can't do the same job anymore, because we dist-upgraded the debian on it... That would look like some windows upgrade. :)

Any ideas?

Answer 1

call gc_disable() before the loop. Cuts my time in half.

(php added a new garbage collector in 5.3)