Preliminary Apache 2 benchmarks

Based on bug #22815, which talks about unsatisfactory performance of the apache 2 sapi, I've decided to conduct several benchmarks to determine the depth of the problem. Based on my tests (ran using 4.3.2-cvs on 1Ghz celeron) it appears that the apache2handler is indeed slower. The test script used was <?php for ($i=0; $i<100;$i++) { echo $i; } ?> This script resulted in a 270 byte header being generated in addition to 190 bytes of actual content. Apache 2 filter (the original apache 2 sapi) was able to handle 143 requests/second, while Apache2handler (newer & more stable sapi) could handle only 133 requests/second. This represents aproximately 7% performance loss for rather small request. My next test was an attempt to determine the performance difference for larger requests that one may encounter in real life situations. Test script #2 <?php $str = str_repeat('a', 4096); for ($i=0; $i<8; $i++) { echo $str; } ?> With Apache 2 filter I was able to send between 150-167 requests per second, each request comprising of header 270 bytes and content 32768 bytes, with a Net I/O: 4895.8 KB/s. The increase in perfromance can be explained by a significantly lower number of calls to the output function and tunning the output to benefit the most from output buffering. Same test with Apache 2 handler resulted in: Request rate: 132.0 req/s (7.6 ms/req) Reply rate [replies/s]: min 117.4 avg 132.0 max 152.3 Net I/O: 3915.6 KB/s CPU time [s]: user 7.63 system 38.92 (user 10.1% system 51.4% total 61.5%) All tests were conducated 10 times a piece and a total of 10000 requests were sent during each test instance. Ilia