&gt; A request comes in, the PHP process loads up everything, executes the request and tears down...on every single request.<p>It&#x27;s called the &quot;shared nothing architecture&quot;, and its by design.  Nothing is shared between requests, so why _not_ tear down?<p>That model actually has a lot of benefits for web applications (it scales very well), and I consider it one of PHP&#x27;s strong points.