Bytecode as a source protection tool?

Question

PHP

Colleagues,
PHP has accelerators (eaccelerator, xcache, etc) that make life easier for the PHP engine itself by storing the compiled bytecode of scripts in the cache.
Continuing the thought, the question arose - is it possible to feed scripts compiled in some way for PHP without the source codes themselves? So use free and opensource script protection.
For example, a small edit of the php module sources will allow feeding empty source scripts to the engine, and when it sees such a trick, it will try to take the previously compiled bytecode from the cache (from disk, for example). If it's not in the cache, it's an error. If a non-empty script is running, then update the bytecode in the cache.
An example of the bytecode is here:
www.php-accelerator.co.uk/PHPA_Article.pdf
ZEND_Encoder, don't offer ioncube :)

Answer 1

Are you talking about something similar to bCompiler ?