PHP-only Piwik API? (3 replies)

Is it possible to use the Piwik API via PHP only (no external requests like PiwikTracker.php).

I'm using PiwikTracker.php to track visitors like in this tutorial:
http://khromov.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/collect-visitor-stats-using-any-image-with-the-piwik-tracking-api/

Unforunately, this makes every pageview add an aditional HTTP request to Piwik, which is housed on the same server.
As a result of this, my Apache workers clog up (see attached image).

Can we access the Piwik API through PHP only? So no extra requests are passed to Apache.

Thanks.