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And now for 5.5, a compiler.

PHP 5.3 got cool features as closures, late static binding, garbage collection so on the only one I dont like is namespaces the syntax is horrible. Anyway PHP after all this years is getting a powerful, scalable, stable and great web/web service programming language. Oh I said it hehe.

Yakkoh you mean a vm or something like that?, I hope PHP stay focus on web development because is best at that. For GUI/Desktop I will use Python or C++. For replace Cobol and distribute computing, Java or even for replace Java with Erlang heheh.

Anyway, I dont understand why with all this features should not be called PHP 6 instead with a minor version.

The scripts should be compiled in .net or in binary. A VM is my second choice, but if it makes the scripts run faster, then it is okay. Frameworks would be used with very little speed penalty. CMS (Drupal, Joomla, ...) would run instantaneously. With a compiler PHP would be THE platform for the WEB.

You seem to have no clue how PHP works. It is compiled into "opcodes" similar to Java's bytecode or .NET's MSIL. This is what gets cached by tools like APC so the script is compiled only once until it changes. This makes PHP pretty fast as it is in relative terms as long as you enable caching.
You should also know that most of the web applications are slow because of notoriously poor browser performance, excessive number of HTTP request, poor caching etc. PHP's performance is pretty much irrelevant in most of the cases, even if backend is slow it's usually database's fault.