The HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) is an open-source virtual machine that was specifically developed to run programs written in Hack, a programming language. This was created by Meta, formerly known as Facebook[1], as a successor to HipHop for PHP (HPHPc). HHVM operates based on the Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation principle, a method aimed at enhancing code execution efficiency. It introduced an intermediate bytecode format, HHBC, which simplifies both development and deployment processes. HHVM is known for its superior performance, including high web server throughput, low latency, and dynamic optimization of x86-64 machine code. It’s associated with other tech like LLVM, Parrot virtual machine, and Phalanger. HHVM’s source code can be found on GitHub[2] and it’s licensed under PHP and Zend Licenses.
HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) is an open-source virtual machine based on just-in-time (JIT) compilation that serves as an execution engine for the Hack programming language. By using the principle of JIT compilation, Hack code is first transformed into intermediate HipHop bytecode (HHBC), which is then dynamically translated into x86-64 machine code, optimized, and natively executed. This contrasts with PHP's usual interpreted execution, in which the Zend Engine transforms PHP source code into opcodes that serve as a form of bytecode, and executes the opcodes directly on the Zend Engine's virtual CPU.
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Developer(s) | Meta Platforms |
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Initial release | December 9, 2011 |
Stable release | |
Repository | |
Written in | PHP, C++, OCaml and Rust |
License | PHP License and Zend License |
Website | hhvm |
HHVM is developed by Meta, with the project's source code hosted on GitHub; it is licensed under the terms of the PHP License and Zend License.