Group rows in a 2d array and count number of rows in each respective group

Just iterate over the array and use another array for the groups. It should be fast enough and is probably faster than the overhead involved when using sqlite or similar.

$groups = array();
foreach ($data as $item) {
    $key = $item['key_to_group'];
    if (!isset($groups[$key])) {
        $groups[$key] = array(
            'items' => array($item),
            'count' => 1,
        );
    } else {
        $groups[$key]['items'][] = $item;
        $groups[$key]['count'] += 1;
    }
}