[drupal-devel] performance improvements - avoiding big unserialize()

In speaking with Rasmus last night, he discouraged us from using unserialize() on large arrays when possible. This eats memory and speed. We do this at lkeast twice on evrry page view: the menu cache and the variables cache (i.e. $conf). Rasmus' suggestion was to store these arrays without serialization in a shared memory system like APC. I have a long term plan to add *optional* shared memory storage for these arrays and maybe others as they arise. Perhaps someone else wants to move this forward quickly. Comments welcome.