title: Memory optimization in PHP array
body: <p>I'm working with a large array which is a height map, 1024x1024 and of course, i'm stuck with the memory limit. In my test machine i can increase the mem limit to 1gb if i want, but in my tiny VPS with only 256 ram, it's not an option.</p>
  
  <p>I've been searching in stack and google and found several "well, you are using PHP not because memory efficiency, ditch it and rewrite in c++" and honestly, that's ok and I recognize PHP loves memory.</p>
  
  <p>But, when digging more inside PHP memory management, I did not find what memory consumes every data type. Or if casting to another type of data reduces mem consumption.</p>
  
  <p>The only "optimization" technique i found was to unset variables and arrays, that's it.</p>
  
  <p>Converting the code to c++ using some PHP parsers would solve the problem?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>