As of PHP 5.4, the mysqlnd library is a php.net compile time default to all PHP MySQL extensions. Also, the php.net Windows team is using mysqlnd for the official PHP Windows distribution since mysqlnd became available in PHP 5.3.
Advantages of using mysqlnd
The mysqlnd library is highly optimized for and tightly integrated into PHP. The MySQL Client Library cannot offer the same optimizations because it is a general-purpose client library.
The mysqlnd library is using PHP internal C infrastructure for seamless integration into PHP. In addition, it is using PHP memory management, PHP Streams (I/O abstraction) and PHP string handling routines. The use of PHP memory management by mysqlnd allows, for example, memory savings by using read-only variables (copy on write) and makes mysqlnd apply to PHP memory limits. Additional advantages include: