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PHP nowadays already has a JIT compiler and its own bytecode, no need for WebAssembly.

This seems like a misunderstanding, WebAssembly has nothing to do with PHP’s internal performance mechanisms. WASM is a compilation target, this means you can take code which needs to be compiled (like PHP’s core binary), and compile it to be run in a browser.

PHP in WASM means developers can run actual, real, native PHP code in the user’s browser, without the user needing to have PHP installed locally, or nginx, etc…

Because I always wanted to run PHP in the browser.

You could do that, but the post here is in fact about running PHP on a server on top of a Wasm runtime.

“At the edge” basically means “close to the user”, with the details left as an exercise to whoever is selling you their “edge.” In this case, it’s a Wasm runtime company.

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