How fast is a C++ extension?
Native extensions are fast. But how fast are they? We can demonstrate this with a very simple extension: bubblesort.
Bubblesort is an extremely inefficient sorting algorithm that is never used in real world software - but that is often used in universities to demonstrate algorithms. We will show you an implementation of this algorithm in PHP and in C++ - and see how much faster the C++ code is.
<?php
/**
* Bubblesort function in PHP
*
* This function takes an unsorted array as input, sorts it, and returns
* the output. It only uses normal PHP operations, and does not rely on
* any built-in PHP functions or on functions from extensions
*
* @param array An unsorted array of integers
* @return array A sorted array
*/
function scripted_bubblesort(array $input)
{
// number of elements in the array
$count = count($input);
// loop through the array
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++)
{
// loop through the elements that were already processed
for ($j = 1; $j < $count - $i; $j++)
{
// move on if smaller
if ($input[$j-1] <= $input[$j]) continue;
// swap elements
$temp = $input[$j];
$input[$j] = $input[$j-1];
$input[$j-1] = $temp;
}
}
// done
return $input;
}
?>And exactly the same algorithm in C++:
#include <phpcpp.h>
/**
* Bubblesort function in C++
*
* This function takes an unsorted array as input, sorts it, and returns
* the output. Notice that we have not really done our best to make the
* implementation of this function as efficient as possible - we use stl
* containers for example - it is simple looking plain C++ function with
* a lot of room for improvements.
*
* @param array An unsorted array of integers
* @return array A sorted array
*/
Php::Value native_bubblesort(Php::Parameters ¶ms)
{
// there is one input array, cast the PHP variable to a vector of ints
std::vector<int> input = params[0];
// loop through the array
for (size_t i = 0; i < input.size(); i++)
{
// loop through the elements that were already processed
for (size_t j = 1; j < input.size() - i; j++)
{
// move on if smaller
if (input[j-1] <= input[j]) continue;
// swap elements
int temp = input[j];
input[j] = input[j-1];
input[j-1] = temp;
}
}
// done
return input;
}
/**
* Switch to C context, because the Zend-engine calls the get_module() method
* in C context, and not in C++ context
*/
extern "C" {
/**
* When a PHP extension starts up, the Zend engine calls the get_module()
* function to find out which functions and classes are offered by the
* extension
*
* @return void* pointer to memory address holding the extension information
*/
PHPCPP_EXPORT void *get_module()
{
// create an instance of the Php::Extension class
static Php::Extension extension("bubblesort", "1.0");
// add the bubblesort function to the extension, we also tell the
// extension that the function receives one parameter by value, and
// that that parameter must be an array
extension.add("native_bubblesort", native_bubblesort, {
Php::ByVal("input", Php::Type::Array)
});
// return the extension
return extension;
}
}You may be surprised how simple the C++ function looks. It is almost identical to the PHP code. That's true indeed, writing native extensions with PHP-CPP is simple, and you can easily port your PHP functions to C++.
You also see an additional get_module() function in the source code. This is the startup function that is called by the Zend engine when PHP starts up. It is supposed to return information to the Zend engine about the extension, so that the "native_bubblesort" function is accessible for PHP scripts.
We start with a silly question
How would the native bubblesort function compare to the built-in sort() function of PHP? This is a silly question. Bubblesort is an extremely inefficient algorithm, which should never be used for real sorting. We have only used it here to demonstrate the performance difference between PHP and C++, when you implement exactly the same algorithm in the two languages.
The built-in sort() function of PHP is much faster than bubblesort. It is based on quicksort, one of the best and most famous sorting algorithms there is. And on top of that: the built-in sort() function is implemented in C! Thus, when you compare the example C++ bubblesort function with the built-in PHP sort() function, you are comparing two different algorithms, and both have a native implementation. And we want to do exactly the opposite: we want to compare two identical algorithms, one of which is written in PHP, and the other one completely in C++.
Ok. It's time for the results. Let's run the two functions with an array filled with random numbers.
<?php
// fill an array with random numbers
$count = 10000;
$x = array();
for ($i=0; $i<$count; $i++) $x[] = rand(0, 1000000);
// run the native and scripted bubblesort functions
$start = microtime(true);
$y = native_bubblesort($x);
$native = microtime(true);
$x = scripted_bubblesort($x);
$scripted = microtime(true);
// show the results
echo("Native: ".($native - $start)." seconds\n");
echo("Scripted: ".($scripted - $native)." seconds\n");
?>This is the output on a regular laptop. You can see that the native C++ implementation is more than ten times faster than the PHP implementation.
Native: 0.79793095588684 seconds
Scripted: 8.9202060699463 secondsSummary
C++ is faster - much faster - than code in PHP, even for very simple scripts. The source code for an extension written in C++ is almost identical to the source of the same algorithm in PHP. This means that every programmer that is capable of writing a PHP script, could just as well write it in C++ and get a ten times better performance.