Never content with good enough when it comes to speed, Facebook has taken its open-source, PHP-boosting HipHop technology to the next level for programmers. With the new HipHop Virtual Machine, Facebook claims it has improved upon HipHop interpreter performance by 60 percent, meaning PHP developers can be even more productive. Looking forward, HipHop VM will help improve PHP performance on the Facebook website.

In its original form, HipHop converted PHP to AST to C++ to x64. Not only has it boosted performance for Facebook, but also for a variety of other PHP-based sites, including Drupal, MediaWiki and WordPress. But Facebook wanted to make HipHop even better, so it undertook the HipHop VM effort.

In a blog post introducing HipHop Virtual Machine, Facebook software engineer Jason Evans describes it as an experiment in just-in-time translation of PHP to native machine code with the ultimate goal of further boosting performance over the original HipHop incarnation. The execution engine consists of a new interpreter that turns standard PHP into HipHop bytecode, and a dynamic translator that turns the HipHop bytecode into x64. The dynamic translator aims to replace Facebook’s existing HipHop compiler, which Evans says is somewhat problematic because it’s a static compiler while PHP is a dynamic language.

“For perspective on why this matters, consider that many Facebook engineers spend their days developing PHP code in an endless edit-reload-debug cycle,” Evans said.  ”The difference between 8-second and 5-second reloads due to switching from hphpi to the hhvm interpreter makes a big difference to productivity, and this improvement will be even more dramatic once we enable the translator.”

Presently, Facebook uses the new interpreter for day-to-day development, but is working on narrowing the performance gap between the existing HipHop compiler and the new dynamic translator, as well as generally stabilizing that component. However, the company thinks HipHop VM “will eventually outperform statically compiled binaries in Facebook’s production environment.”

Evans’ post describes the technical details of HipHop VM, as well as Facebook’s plans for making it ready for production. Although HipHop VM is relatively Facebook-specific right now, one has to assume it will become more widely adopted as it matures, and will gain traction among a number of large-scale PHP deployments.

Image courtesy of Flickr user jpctalbot.

Disclosure: Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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The digital era gap is defined because the occurrence of a child who is rather more pc savvy than their mother or father! The gap is slowly closing as those who have been faculty age earlier than computers turned commonplace get older. Nonetheless, the digital technology gap can result in issues similar to on-line predators, publicity to inappropriate material and identity theft. I say the very best approach is the two pronged widespread sense combined with a fast overview of parental management settings and pc monitoring software program!

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This {two} pronged method is meant to be run simultaneously. Therefore, whereas implying which you can and will snoop at any given moment you also needs to really do a little analysis and familiarize your self with your computer.

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Though the digital era hole is getting smaller, kids are nonetheless total extra pc savvy than their parents. To keep away from the potential problems of online predators, exposure to inappropriate material and identity theft it is time to brush up your communication and computer abilities!

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The story of Protocetus, one of the very earliest whales and the fossil that could have quickly closed a gap in our understanding of one of the greatest transitions in evolutionary history.

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Between Samsung’s Galaxy Note and the Boogie Board Rip, a mini-trend emerged at IFA last week with companies attempting to bridge the gap between paper notebooks and digital devices. Japanese office supply manufacturer Kokuyo is looking to get in on the action, utilizing devices that consumers already own. In August, the company’s CamiApp was released for iOS, with an Android version coming later this month. The app scans and digitizes handwritten text, letting users edit, highlight, email, tag and share the information with apps like Evernote and Dropbox. The apps are specially designed to work with forthcoming “smartphone-friendly” paper notepads from the company. According to Kokuyo, the notebooks have “special features” that make digital capture easier. Eight different notebooks will be made available tomorrow. The company is also working on making the CamiApp notebooks available overseas.

Continue reading Kokuyo’s CamiApp brings paper back to note-taking (video)

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When blowing up land mines for military training is accompanied by a goat sacrifice, the cultural divide between the U.S. and the rest of the world looms large. Yet, more and more the job of U.S. troops abroad is to bridge that gap in the service of peacekeeping by training local armies. Wired.com was on the scene in Mozambique to view one of these training events firsthand.

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With a keen understanding of the old “eyes are the window to the soul” truism, Steven Spielberg equipped E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial with a look similar to Albert Einstein’s deep-set visage. In a pair of remarkable new movies in theaters now, charismatic simians — the aliens among us — bridge the species gap with their soulful gazes.

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