GoKawiilQbix launches PHP server using fork-based workers to boost concurrency
A developer built Qbix, a PHP webserver that forks thousands of lightweight worker processes from a single parent process using pcntl_fork(), relying on the Linux kernel's copy-on-write memory sharing. Unlike FrankenPHP, RoadRunner or PHP-FPM, which are limited by worker count due to memory duplication, Qbix lets each worker share the framework's loaded classes and only pay memory costs for pages it actually modifies during a request.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
Most real-world PHP code uses blocking I/O and can't benefit from coroutine-based solutions like Swoole, so a model that makes blocking workers cheap to scale addresses a much larger share of existing PHP applications, including WordPress and Laravel. By using only standard OS process forking rather than custom C extensions or allocators, Qbix offers a low-complexity path to dramatically higher concurrency on the same hardware.
- Qbix forks worker processes from a fully-loaded parent, letting the kernel's copy-on-write mechanism share memory across workers.
- A typical request only dirties about 120KB of memory, allowing thousands of workers to run in the space that traditionally supports only a handful.
- The approach works with existing blocking PHP code, unlike coroutine-based servers such as Swoole that require non-blocking I/O.
Source: qbixserver.com, 2026-09-18
Published there as: “I built the fastest PHP webserver in the world”
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