Cal Evans has run some initial benchmarks on the newly released Windows PHP cache accelerator (see here) and the results are promising.

I do not pretend that this benchmark will mirror real-world results. It is simply an indicator that WinCache may improve the performance of your application because it did in the case of this one. Ok, so now we are clear about what we are seeing here. it’s not a guarantee, it’s just a pointer in the right direction. Let me take you through what I did and how I tested.

His tests were run on a machine with Windows 7, MySQL, the Web Platform Installer and PHP. He walks through the steps he followed to prepare the environment and to run his tests on a sample WordPress install both with and without the cache enabled. Check out his entry for the results!

As is mentioned in this new article from Visual Studio Magazine today, a new caching accelerator for PHP has been released for the Windows platform.

The new "Windows Cache Extension for PHP" solution, currently in beta release, is an accelerator that works with the PHP engine in Windows and Windows Server. Microsoft released two versions. Users of PHP 5.2 can download the beta here, while PHP 5.3 users can get it here.

The extension works with the Web Platform Installer and IIS versions 7.5, 7.0, 6.5 and 5.1. Ruslan Yakushev has blogged a bit more information about the extension noting that it only works with non-thread-safe builds of PHP and IIS needs to be able to use FastCGI modules.

For more details on using the extension, check out this guide from Microsoft.

Mike Willbanks has made a series of posts covering the acceleration tools available for you the PHP developer and some of the benchmarks of using them in an application.

Here's the list:

• PHP Accelerators : APC vs Zend vs XCache with Zend Framework - a comparison of three tools - APC, the Zend Framework components and the XCache tool
• Zend Framework Performance Zend_Loader - a specific look at benchmarks on the Zend_Loader component
• PHP Accelerators: The Missing Details - benchmark results (and code) showing results from testing on the Zend_Loader component
• Accelerators Revisited - a revisit to some of the benchmarks made previously (to change things based on user contributed comments)

Mike Willbanks has made a series of posts covering the acceleration tools available for you the PHP developer and some of the benchmarks of using them in an application.

Here's the list:

• PHP Accelerators : APC vs Zend vs XCache with Zend Framework - a comparison of three tools - APC, the Zend Framework components and the XCache tool
• Zend Framework Performance Zend_Loader - a specific look at benchmarks on the Zend_Loader component
• PHP Accelerators: The Missing Details - benchmark results (and code) showing results from testing on the Zend_Loader component
• Accelerators Revisited - a revisit to some of the benchmarks made previously (to change things based on user contributed comments)