I am telling no secret saying MySQL 5.6 GA can be expected to be released soon, very soon. Time to test one of the improvements: MySQL 5.6 speaks SQL and Memcache protocol. In your PHP MySQL apps, try using the Memcache protocol to query MySQL. A key-value SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE pk = <key> can become 1.5x-2x faster, an INSERT INTO table(pk, ...) VALUES (<key> ...) can become 4.5x-9x faster, says the InnoDB team! Read on: background, benchmark, usage, PECL/mysqlnd_memcache,