PHP vs. C Benchmarking System

This project provides a simple framework for benchmarking the performance of various functions in PHP against their equivalents in C.

Benchmarked Functions

The following functions are included in this benchmark suite:

• password_hash() (using Argon2i, mem=32768, time=2, threads=1)
• hash('sha256', ...)
• substr()
• gmp_init()
• gmp_mul()
• gmp_add()
• gmp_div()
• hexdec()
• time()
• Date Math: Addition
• Date Math: Subtraction
• microtime(true)

Requirements

• Ubuntu 22.04 (or a compatible Debian-based distribution)
• git

Setup and Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd <repository-directory>

2. Run the installer: The install.sh script will update your package manager and install all the required dependencies (gcc, make, php, php-gmp, libgmp-dev, libargon2-dev, libssl-dev, and bc).

   ./install.sh

How to Run the Benchmarks

The benchmarking process is broken into two main scripts: compile.sh and benchmark.sh.

1. Make the scripts executable: (This only needs to be done once.)

   chmod +x compile.sh
   chmod +x benchmark.sh

2. Compile the C code: This script navigates to the c/ directory, cleans any old binaries, and compiles all the C source files using the optimized flags specified in the Makefile.

   ./compile.sh

3. Run the benchmark suite:

   ./benchmark.sh [crypto_iterations] [fast_func_iterations]

   • [crypto_iterations] is an optional argument for the number of iterations for slow cryptographic functions (e.g., password_hash). Defaults to 1000.
   • [fast_func_iterations] is an optional argument for the number of iterations for all other, faster functions. Defaults to 100000.

   Example:

   # Run with default iterations
   ./benchmark.sh
   
   # Run with 10 crypto iterations and 1,000,000 fast function iterations
   ./benchmark.sh 10 1000000

How it Works

The benchmark.sh script performs the following actions:

1. Executes Benchmarks: For each function, it runs both the compiled C executable and the corresponding PHP script, passing the same set of parameters (input data and iterations).
2. Collects Results: It captures the execution time (in seconds) from the output of each script.
3. Generates Report: The results are saved in a CSV file at results/benchmark_results.csv. The script will also print the contents of this file to the console upon completion.

C Binaries

You can compile the C binaries at any time by running the ./compile.sh script or by running make inside the c/ directory. The compiled binaries are committed to the repository.