Own webserver, with PHP plus opcache/similar?

Hey. I am not particulary sure if this is the right list to ask this, but I decided I would just try (besides, its the only list I subscribed to). For an application that I run, I have bumped against apache’s edge: WebSocket support. But the main application is written in PHP, Yii Framework, so I do not want to move away from this - and cant do that very easily either. So I was thinking about writing my own webserver, maybe in nodejs or the like, but also take best advantage of PHP. What I mean is, that I read somewhere, that php-fpm, or something similar?, can stay open as a background process and cache scripts, so they are executed faster. Again, I only skimmed over an article, but sadly do not have access to my browser history at th emoment - and will not for a bunch of weeks - so I can not get back there. What would you recommend for this? I want to max out the speed of my PHP execution time. Kind regards, Ingwie.