Hi,
first of all let me state that I very much enjoy Phalcon and am very pleased by it's features and speed so far. Having said that, I'm a little worried about the benchmark results at https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7&test=query
Phalcon full stack is the 4th from the end on that benchmark and has a lot of failed runs. This is a "little" disturbing. The test itself seems straightforward: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/php-phalcon/app/controllers/BenchController.php The queriesAction which is responsible for the results in question is just a bunch of random findFirst calls.
The same goes for other tests there. Phalcon seems to have lowest success rate in both "Single query" and "Fortunes" test types.
Have you guys seen that benchmark? Any thoughts? Maybe the test itself is messed up, but I don't see how. The one thing that comes to mind is the PHQL layer, which might be responsible.