What improvements in new PHP releases have contributed to its increased performance?

In new PHP releases, performance has been improved through several key changes:

• Zend Engine Optimization — the PHP core has become faster due to improved bytecode and interpreter optimizations.
• JIT compilation (Just-In-Time) — starting with PHP 8, JIT compilation was introduced, allowing some code to be executed directly on the processor, speeding up execution.
• Improvements in memory management — optimized allocation and freeing of memory reduce overhead.
• Standard library optimization — many frequently used functions now run faster.

Example of enabling JIT in php.ini:

opcache.enable=1
opcache.jit_buffer_size=100M
opcache.jit=tracing

These improvements together enhance the overall performance of PHP applications.