Logs from two terminals, the first running the marrow.server.http HTTP/1.1 server in pre-fork mode (no threading) and the second running AB and checking memory. The third is a partial snapshot of `top` checking CPU utilization. [benchmark, performance, http]

Terminal 1 - Server

ecanus ~ # echo 32768 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
ecanus ~ # ulimit -n 32768
ecanus ~ # cd ~amcgregor/personal; . bin/activate; cd src
(personal)ecanus src # python
Python 2.6.5 (release26-maint, Aug  8 2010, 20:35:07) 
[GCC 4.3.4] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 
(personal)ecanus src # python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
INFO:marrow.server.base:Starting up.
INFO:marrow.server.base:Pre-forking 4 processes from PID 11542.
DEBUG:marrow.server.base:Executing startup hooks.
DEBUG:marrow.server.base:Executing startup hooks.
INFO:marrow.server.base:Server running with PID 11543, serving on *:8080.
INFO:marrow.server.base:Server running with PID 11544, serving on *:8080.
DEBUG:marrow.server.base:Executing startup hooks.
INFO:marrow.server.base:Server running with PID 11545, serving on *:8080.
DEBUG:marrow.server.base:Executing startup hooks.
INFO:marrow.server.base:Server running with PID 11546, serving on *:8080.

Terminal 2 - ApacheBench

ecanus ~ # ulimit -n 32768
ecanus ~ # ps aux | grep marrow      
root     11542  0.5  1.2   9228  6548 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11543  0.0  0.9   9228  4932 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11544  0.0  0.9   9228  4932 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11545  0.0  0.9   9228  4932 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11546  0.0  0.9   9228  4932 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11550  0.0  0.1   1880   560 pts/3    S+   08:21   0:00 grep --colour=auto marrow
ecanus ~ # ab -n 100000 -c 10000 http://127.0.0.1:8080/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient)
Completed 10000 requests
Completed 20000 requests
Completed 30000 requests
Completed 40000 requests
Completed 50000 requests
Completed 60000 requests
Completed 70000 requests
Completed 80000 requests
Completed 90000 requests
Completed 100000 requests
Finished 100000 requests


Server Software:        
Server Hostname:        127.0.0.1
Server Port:            8080

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10000
Time taken for tests:   16.653 seconds
Complete requests:      100000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      7968345 bytes
HTML transferred:       1241820 bytes
Requests per second:    6004.77 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       1665.341 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.167 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          467.27 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:       28  828 1425.1    472    9567
Processing:    82  608 234.8    576    1362
Waiting:       57  461 202.6    423    1178
Total:        144 1436 1465.2   1127   10568

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%   1127
  66%   1253
  75%   1372
  80%   1509
  90%   1812
  95%   3971
  98%   9893
  99%  10073
 100%  10568 (longest request)
ecanus ~ # ps aux | grep marrow
root     11542  0.1  1.2   9228  6548 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:00 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11543 12.3  1.9  14536 10292 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:05 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11544 13.1  2.1  15620 11380 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:06 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11545 16.7  2.3  16312 12292 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:07 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11546 19.5  2.6  18264 14088 pts/2    S+   08:21   0:09 python marrow.server.http/marrow/server/http/__init__.py
root     11553  0.0  0.1   1884   564 pts/3    S+   08:22   0:00 grep --colour=auto marrow

Terminal 3 - Top

top - 08:26:29 up 187 days, 11:22,  4 users,  load average: 0.45, 0.18, 0.07

11579 root      20   0  108m  69m 1472 R   77 13.4   0:10.91 ab                                                                                                                                                                                              
11578 root      20   0 20752  16m 1176 S   58  3.2   0:07.32 python                                                                                                                                                                                          
11576 root      20   0 15088  10m 1176 S   42  2.1   0:05.60 python                                                                                                                                                                                          
11577 root      20   0 15368  11m 1176 S   40  2.1   0:05.86 python                                                                                                                                                                                          
11575 root      20   0 15044  10m 1176 S   20  2.1   0:04.93 python                                                                                                                                                                                          

For a recent PHP framework review: http://systemsarchitect.net/performance-benchmark-of-popular-php-frameworks/