TCPDF - How to make the printing faster? It is very very slow, 1320 records took 40 minutes

Question

Using Zend framework and TCPDF this is taking 40 minutes to print the Test.pdf. I having now no idea how to reduce this abnormal time to something normal?

set_time_limit(0);
$pdf = new TCPDF(PDF_PAGE_ORIENTATION, PDF_UNIT, PDF_PAGE_FORMAT, true, 'UTF-8', false);
$pdf->SetHeaderData(PDF_HEADER_LOGO, PDF_HEADER_LOGO_WIDTH, PDF_HEADER_TITLE, PDF_HEADER_STRING);
$pdf->setHeaderFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_MAIN, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_MAIN));
$pdf->setFooterFont(Array(PDF_FONT_NAME_DATA, '', PDF_FONT_SIZE_DATA));
$pdf->SetDefaultMonospacedFont(PDF_FONT_MONOSPACED);
$pdf->SetMargins(PDF_MARGIN_LEFT, PDF_MARGIN_TOP, PDF_MARGIN_RIGHT);
$pdf->SetHeaderMargin(PDF_MARGIN_HEADER);
$pdf->SetFooterMargin(PDF_MARGIN_FOOTER);
$pdf->SetAutoPageBreak(TRUE, PDF_MARGIN_BOTTOM);
$pdf->setImageScale(PDF_IMAGE_SCALE_RATIO);
$pdf->setLanguageArray($l);
$pdf->setFontSubsetting(true);
$pdf->SetFont('dejavusans', '', 8, '', true);
$pdf->AddPage();
/* Database mysql gives the records and it is wrapped with <table> */
$html = "<table>1310 records.... with some simple <tr><td></td></tr></table>";
$pdf->writeHTMLCell($w=0, $h=0, $x='', $y='', $html, $border=0, $ln=1, $fill=0, $reseth=true, $align='', $autopadding=true);
$pdf->Output('Test.pdf', 'I');
exit;

Follow up: (tune the performance)

1) php.ini: memory_limit = 512M max_execution_time = 0

2) Codeing $pdf->setFontSubsetting(false); // true to false

3) Debug shows, following taking the whole time

$pdf->writeHTMLCell($w=0, $h=0, $x='', $y='', $html, $border=0, $ln=1, $fill=0, $reseth=true, $align='', $autopadding=true);

Answer 1

Since no other answers have been forthcoming, I would highly recommend a good look at MPDF (GPL) as it's much faster than TCPDF. I've had operations on one server that took approx three minutes using TCPDF being reduced to seconds with MPDF. I would only assume that some format of my HTML -> PDF was hitting some inefficient function in TCPDF.

Anyway I present the following code which helped me convert HTML -> PDF.

$mpdf = new mPDF('c');
$mpdf->setDisplayMode('fullpage');
$stylesheet = file_get_contents('css/core.css');
$mpdf->WriteHTML($stylesheet,1);
$html = "<table>1310 records.... with some simple <tr><td></td></tr></table>";
$mpdf->WriteHTML($html); 
$mpdf->Output(standardize(ampersand('filename', false)) . '.pdf', 'D');

This code provides a PDF outputted as a downloadable file, the MPDF documentation gives lots of other examples to suit your needs.