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Bug #50351 performance regression handling objects, ten times slower in 5.3 than in 5.2
Submitted: 2009-12-01 12:53 UTC Modified: 2009-12-07 08:17 UTC
Votes:1
Avg. Score:5.0 ± 0.0
Reproduced:1 of 1 (100.0%)
Same Version:1 (100.0%)
Same OS:1 (100.0%)
From: rlillack at yasni dot de Assigned: dmitry (profile)
Status: Closed Package: Scripting Engine problem
PHP Version: 5.3.1 OS: 64/32bit linux
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2009-12-01 12:53 UTC] rlillack at yasni dot de 
Description:
------------
PHP 5.3 did indeed introduce many performance improvements, but we 
spotted a rather hard regression with handling a large amount of 
objects that are allocated at the same time.

Running the following test case on one of our web servers yield this 
result with a vanilla build of 5.2.11:

time: 1.28 secs, memory usage 376.48 MiB.

and this with 5.3.1:

time: 13.44 secs, memory usage 400.62 MiB.

(command line in both cases: PREFIX/bin/php -d memory_limit=2G 
testcase.php)

The regression at least since the PHP 5.3 release candidates.

Both were fresh build straight from the tarball, No extensions, etc. 
Opcode caches do not help. --with-zend-vm does not help.


Reproduce code:
---------------
<?php
$start = microtime(TRUE);

$a = array();
foreach (range(1, 1000000) as $i) {
    $a []= new StdClass;
}

printf("time: %s secs, memory usage %s MiB.\n",
       number_format(microtime(TRUE) - $start, 2),
       number_format(memory_get_usage() / 1024 / 1024, 2));


Expected result:
----------------
PHP 5.3.1 should not be any slower than 5.2.11 is. :)

Actual result:
--------------
PHP 5.3.1 is ten times slower in this test case.

One of our apps does only handle 1/4th queries/s with 5.3 on a 
production server.

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History

AllCommentsChangesGit/SVN commitsRelated reports
 [2009-12-01 13:37 UTC] jani@php.net 
[jani@localhost ~]$ src/build/php_5_2/sapi/cli/php -n -d memory_limit=2G t.php
time: 4.10 secs, memory usage 371.39 MiB.
[jani@localhost ~]$ src/build/php_5_3/sapi/cli/php -n -d memory_limit=2G t.php
time: 25.97 secs, memory usage 383.46 MiB.
 [2009-12-01 13:38 UTC] jani@php.net 
My results were done with i686..
 [2009-12-01 13:48 UTC] rlillack at yasni dot de 
This seems to be related to the new cyclic garbage collector trying to 
free memory after each allocation?!

A rather simple workaround is to insert gc_disable() before and gc_enable() after entering the loop.
 [2009-12-01 14:46 UTC] jani@php.net 
See also bug #48781 (propably related as well)
 [2009-12-02 08:42 UTC] notarealemail at nodomain dot com 
Simply changing the loop from

foreach (range(1, 1000000) as $i)

to

for ( $i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++ )

Makes php 5.3.1 (win xp vc9 nots cli) run "normal", even faster than 5.2.11 (same configuration).

Performance (php 5.3.1):

time: 8.23 secs, memory usage 219.38 MiB. (original loop)
time: 0.91 secs, memory usage 219.39 MiB. (modified loop)
time: 0.72 secs, memory usage 219.38 MiB. (modified loop, GC disabled)

Tested on a E8400 3GHz.
 [2009-12-02 08:59 UTC] jani@php.net 
Not exactly faster but better than with foreach():

[jani@localhost ~]$ php -d memory_limit=2G t.php
time: 2.73 secs, memory usage 371.39 MiB.
[jani@localhost ~]$ src/build/php_5_3/sapi/cli/php -d memory_limit=2G t.php
time: 3.05 secs, memory usage 383.46 MiB.
 [2009-12-02 09:11 UTC] notarealemail at nodomain dot com 
Sorry, forgotten a benchmark:

time: 0.90 secs, memory usage 219.38 MiB. (original loop, GC disabled)

So the problem seems more related to foreach+array+garbage collector than class allocation
 [2009-12-02 09:59 UTC] rlillack at yasni dot de 
It has to do something with object allocation because the problem does 
NOT occur with this loop:

foreach (range(1, 1000000) as $i) {
    $a []= array($i);
}
 [2009-12-02 12:10 UTC] dmitry@php.net 
The reason of slowdown is Garbage Collector. I'll take a look into it.
 [2009-12-07 08:14 UTC] svn@php.net 
Automatic comment from SVN on behalf of dmitry
Revision: http://svn.php.net/viewvc/?view=revision&revision=291807
Log: Fixed bug #50351 (performance regression handling objects, ten times slower in 5.3 than in 5.2. foreach statement should not initiate GC)
 [2009-12-07 08:17 UTC] dmitry@php.net 
This bug has been fixed in SVN.

Snapshots of the sources are packaged every three hours; this change
will be in the next snapshot. You can grab the snapshot at
http://snaps.php.net/.
 
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