Agreed! Framework == good doesn't mean any/all frameworks == good. Many of PHP's frameworks seem to have ignored PHP's unique run-time characteristics and adopted Java idioms (with Java, you pay once at compile time; with PHP, you pay with every single request). Ubiquity, near/at the top of the PHP benchmarks, seems to accept PHP's unique run-time characteristics (so performs well) and yet still provides all the benefits of a framework (consistency, etc). Ubiquity should see much more love than Laravel/Symfony/etc but doesn't :(
No, in 2022 it seems it's not. Just seen this benchmark today: Laravel is the 2nd fastest, after Kirby (but Kirby is static text files CMS so it's not really comparable). Not sure what exactly they've tested and it's probably not super realistic, but still it's far from calling Laravel the slowest.
As soon as you throw an MVC framework into the mix with an ORM the much-touted speed gains of PHP in recents years vanish into thin air. That's because with heavy frameworks PHP's shared nothing architecture works against you.
Generally yes, but there has been at least some improvements regarding this with preloading shipped with PHP 7.4 and with the inheritance cache added to PHP 8.1, both synergize well with framework heavy code.
TechEmpower appears[0] to be using Laravel 8.70, which was released about 3 months ago. Much less than 7 years ago.
The numbers there don't paint an encouraging picture either, but I'm happy to concede that performance isn't everything... it just doesn't matter for some applications. But, numbers like these are pretty appalling to me. (And yes, I feel the same way about Rails.)
Compared to Zend, Symfony and other FWs popular a decade ago, Laravel 4 felt very light... or perhaps less complex is the right word, as I never really compared the file sizes, but it subjectively felt way easier to find your way around...
see http://www.phpbenchmarks.com/en/comparator/framework or https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r20&hw=...