Even more good news for mysqlnd users out there - according to this new post on the Internet Super Hero blog, some of the tuning options it enables can help you save 40% of the memory you were using before.

mysqlnd saves memory. It consumes half as much memory as libmysql. This is what we have been convinced of. This is what we taught you. Then I tried to test it and made Andrey get nervous for a few hours… Meanwhile he is fine again and we can announce: mysqlnd saves memory, not only in theory, we tested it - we can proof it, can we?

The proof comes in the form of a few "tricks" and some of the settings that the software can use to optimize buffer sizes. Benchmarks (and the code to run them) are also included to show what the differences are between mysqlnd and libmysql.