The announcement states that running HipHop has reduced the CPU footprint of the Facebook code base by 50%, over using the standard PHP runtime. Whilst those improvements may not be reflected by all PHP applications, due to the special nature of the Facebook codebase, it represents an undeniably vast improvement to what was previously an engine known for being somewhat hacked together.

As the improved engine is seemingly so much more efficient, I assume a significant portion of the PHP developer community will now start tinkering with HipHop for PHP and the crazier amongst us will start making the switch over on our personal sites and projects. This is going to have a huge impact on the PHP community, web hosting industry and those who work in either. I can only assume that some hosts are already receiving their first “When will we get HipHop for PHP?” emails.

I’m going to set it up on a sub-domain of this site when it’s released this evening, assuming it can run under Apache at the moment, and see how much it affects performance running simple web sites powered by software like WordPress and IP.Board. If it is compatible and makes much of a performance difference, I’ll switch the whole server over here, and start looking at it more seriously for our systems at work.

For more information, see the official announcement by Facebook.