Hi all, As some of you may be aware, we (OpenParallel) have already successfully shown that adding access to threading primitives (Intel's GPL TBB library) can be a performance benefit to WordPress in the context of PHP/HipHop¹.
We are now experimenting with adding similar functionality to PHP/Zend. Now, they are really entirely different because one is a compiler and the other is a virtual machine/interpreter. So, the first obstacle we must overcome is being able to create working slave executors. Once this is shown to work, then the executors can be set to run in their own threads. Then we have the fun job of fixing all the leaks :-). In the context of ZTS this is essentially: void* newinterp = tsrm_new_interpreter_context(); tsrm_set_interpreter_context(newinterp); init_executor(newinterp); // ... do something with newinterp, eg zend_call_function ... tsrm_set_interpreter_context(tsrm_ls); (full code is available at http://github.com/openparallel/php-src.git ) This is somewhat similar to the work that a SAPI would have to do to make an executor for use. In fact one of the possible tidy approaches to implementing threading might be to treat threads as an internal SAPI. However the call to init_executor() does not seem to completely set up the executor to a working state, and trying to use it results in crashes. Using gdb I can track these down, yet they are executor fields which init_executor() at least tried to set up; I haven't tracked down what is going on. What I'm after is: 1) any hints or clues from people familiar with the Zend subsystems - such as memory management, and the various stacks, to provide hints as to how to set them up "correctly" 2) interested internals experts for continuing and/or providing ongoing mentoring assistance (funding may be available for this) 3) pointers to any hardcore internals documentation which may be useful in training up new internals experts. Right now I'm mostly just reading source and making educated guesses; the online internals manuals seem more focused on things like opcodes and nothing relevant to this. Thanks in advance for any help! Cheers, Sam 1 - http://openparallel.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/tbb-in-wordpress-–-white-paper/ -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
