Be warned that SplFixedArray does not provide all of the main functionalities of array. For example, it does not support array_slice. SplFixedArray should be far more efficient at supporting such array operations than normal arrays (since it should be simply a contiguous slice). Check that all your main array functions are really supported before trying to use SplFixedArray instead of array. With JIT in PHP8, some loops to polyfill these are perhaps now realistic, but still not as fast as native functions.