Perl/FastCGI - What happens on exit?

DreamT has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,
Consider this code:

use CGI::Fast qw(:standard);

while ($query = new CGI::Fast)
{
       # Do stuff

       exit if $exit_flag == 0;
}
[download]

Can you describe what happens, both on a Perl level and on a webserver(Apache) level?
I know that the instance is exited, and reloaded the next time when the script is run. But I'd like to understand what exactly happen.

I have a problem on a certain Apache server that the application dies for a while, before Apache "wakes up".

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