One advantage of mod_perl and servlets over PHP is the fact that they have the ability to pre-load information on startup of the web server. Right now, I don't know if PHP has an equivalent but it's something that I'd like to see happen. The reason is that preloading allows some performance optimization by putting some processes or data structures into memory so that the users hitting the server won't have to take a hit. It's kinda like a cache of sorts. I do think that PHP keeps some parts in a cache in memory before eventually cleaning itself up. But you don't want something like this in all cases. It would be a very nice feature.
Unfortunately, in terms of hosting, this feature probably wouldn't be allowed since you really need a dedicated server for something like this. Imagine the memory consumption of some applications. A hosting company wouldn't be able to handle something like this easily. Not to mention people who require this type of setup probably need dedicated servers to handle these needs.
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