improve `max()` performance

[staabm]

Description

In a recent performance investigation I identified max() as a perf bottleneck in sebastianbergmann/diff#118

@bwoebi chimmed in and suggested max() should be improved at the php-src level.
see his in-detail investigation at sebastianbergmann/diff#118 (comment)

The following code:

<?php
~/php-src-8.2 # time ./sapi/cli/php -r '$b = 1; $c = 2; for ($i = 0; $i < 430000000; ++$i) { $a = max($b, $c); }'

real	0m6.924s
user	0m6.917s
sys	0m0.004s
~/php-src-8.2 # time ./sapi/cli/php -r '$b = 1; $c = 2; for ($i = 0; $i < 430000000; ++$i) { if ($b < $c) { $a = $b; } else { $a = $c; } }'

real	0m2.523s
user	0m2.514s
sys	0m0.008s

max() should be faster

PHP Version

8.2.5

Operating System

macos

[ndossche]

This should probably be done for min too.

I see that is_smaller_or_equal_function is used here, which internally calls zend_compare. I previously also noticed that zend_compare is quite slow for primitives, and on my fork I have a patch that splits that function into a fast path and a slow path. So I wonder how much that would help in this use-case. I'll put it on my todo list to check this.

[Girgias]

FYI I've started working on this, and yes min() should also be done.