Zend Optimizer - vad är det?

Har sökt här i forumet och på zend.com.. inte blivit klokare..
Vad egentligen är det..?
Är det någon mening att ha det hemmavid när koden sedan ska köras på webhotellet eller tillhandahålls detta verktyg av webhotellet?
Någon som vet eller provat? Ska ju också finnas ett högintressant krypteringsverktyg inkluderat..

/Mike

Zend Optimizer™
The Zend Optimizer is a free application that runs the files encoded by the Zend Encoder, enhancing the running speed of PHP applications.

This free application uses multi-pass code optimizations to speed up PHP applications. The increase in speed reduces CPU load for the server typically cutting latency time in by 20-50%.

How Does it Work?
The Zend Optimizer goes over the intermediate code generated by the standard Zend run-time compiler located in the Zend Engine, and then optimizes it for faster execution.

Those who purchase the Zend Encoder can distribute the Zend Optimizer together with their PHP applications to enable encoded files support in their client's PHP. Zend Optimizer allows you to run encoded PHP files encoded by the Zend Encoder.

The standard Zend run-time compiler used by PHP 4 is extremely fast, generating code that is usually 2 to 10 times faster than the equivalent code in PHP 3. Using the Zend Optimizer typically executes another 10% to 50% faster over standard PHP 4.

Hämtat från http://www.zend.com