Q1) I'm designing a CMS (-who isn't!) but priority is being given to caching. Literally everything is cached. DB rows, DB id queries, Configuration data, processed data, compiled templates. Currently it has two layers of caching.

The first is a opcode cache or memory cache such as apc, eaccelerator, xcache or memcached. If an entry is not found in there it is then searched for in the secondary slow cache, ie php includes.

Are the opcode caches actually faster than doing a require_once to a php file with a var_export'd array of data in it? My tests are inconclusive as my development box (5.3 of XAMPP) keeps throwing errors installing any of the aforementioned programs.

Q2) The CMS has numerous helper classes that are autoloaded on demand instead of loading all files. Mostly each has a require before it so no autoloading needs to take place, however this is not the question. Because a page script can have up to 50/60 helper files included I have a feeling that if the site was under pressure it would buckle because of all the i/o that this incurs. Ignore for the moment that there is output cache in place that would remove the need for what I am about to suggest, and also that opcode caches would render this moot. What I have tried to do is join all the helper files required for the scripts execution in one single file. This is achievable and works well, however it has a side effect of greatly increasing the memory usage dramatically even though technically the same code is being used.

What are your thoughts and opinions on this?