The hiphop virtual machine

Abstract

The HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) is a JIT compiler and runtime for PHP. While PHP values are dynamically typed, real programs often have latent types that are useful for optimization once discovered. Some types can be proven through static analysis, but limitations in the ahead-of-time approach leave some types to be discovered at run time. And even though many values have latent types, PHP programs can also contain polymorphic variables and expressions, which must be handled without catastrophic slowdown.