@Baachi - ah, you mean the php version of symfonys templates. But I want to compare raw php with a template solution like twig (my understanding from reading the docs is that twig and the php template solution that symfony offers are nearly the same in the end - a class that contains the output - if I'm wrong please correct me). Maybe the idea is not good (to be honest, I haven't thought this through), but my intention was the following:

although I'm not a php programmer nor a symfony 2 user (besides this benchmark) I've read a lot about both on news sites like hackernews. Back when symfony 2 was in development and fabien mentioned that he thought about including twig as a template solution [1] many users on the web stated that php frameworks don't need template engines, since php is a template engine already (they probably repeated only rasmus lerdorfs article...). One of the points against template engines was the performance, ignoring the benefits that twig could offer. So with this benchmark one could show that the performance impact is neglectable and that the benefits (more safety, inheritance etc.) outweight that.

[1] http://fabien.potencier.org/article/34/templating-engines-in-php (search for symfony 2)