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Firefox Gets Massive JavaScript Performance Boost

monkeymonkey writes "Mozilla has integrated tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter in Firefox. This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by a factor of 20 to 40 in certain contexts. Ars Technica interviewed Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich (the original creator of JavaScript) and Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver. They say that tracing optimization will 'take JavaScript performance into the next tier' and 'get people thinking about JavaScript as a more general-purpose language.' The eventual goal is to make JavaScript run as fast as C code. Ars reports: 'Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. ...They aim to improve execution speed so that it is comparable to that of native code. This will redefine the boundaries of client-side performance and enable the development of a whole new generation of more computationally-intensive web applications.' Mozilla has also published a video that demonstrates the performance difference." An anonymous reader contributes links the blogs of Eich and Shaver, where they have some further benchmarks.

11 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Premature optimization.... by Shados · · Score: 5, Funny

    Considering how long Javascript has been out, and that javascript intensive applications are clearly there in the present, I don't think this is premature =P Its late!

  2. Yeah.. but... by EmagGeek · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will it make my Sony Bluray player take less than 10 minutes to boot and play a disc?

  3. Oh no! by Das+Modell · · Score: 3, Funny

    This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by a factor of 20 to 40 in certain contexts.

    What does the scouter say about its power level?!

  4. Re:Precursor to more of Firefox being in JS by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gecko *is* a full-featured framework.
    ExtJS is for the more restricted web stuff without code signing.
    But then, the parent probably doesn't even know what a prototype is or a closure.

    Reading your first two sentences, I found your post informative and worthwhile. But, with the last sentence, the voice reading your comment in my head suddenly turned into that whiny, high-pitched geek voice they use on cartoons.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  5. Re:The Greatest Idea by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Funny

    Expect this discussion to be full of astroturf, red herrings and trolls

    Ah, no problem. Just give the red herring to the troll and he'll let you pass the bridge :)

  6. Re:The Greatest Idea by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am rubber, you are glue.

  7. Re:Precursor to more of Firefox being in JS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    its not your fault. java made you retarded.

  8. Re:The Greatest Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    It won't be just from the Windows side - a good chunk of Linux-heads hate anything but static black text on plain white backgrounds. So this should get interesting...

    Goes to show what you know. Real Linux-heads hate anything but static white or green text on plain black backgrounds.

  9. Re:Premature optimization.... by poopdeville · · Score: 2, Funny

    Have you considered that his purposes might in fact be intensive?

    --
    After all, I am strangely colored.
  10. Re:Premature optimization.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Thank you for explaining the joke. I, too, am a humorless automaton, so that sort of thing really helps out.

  11. Re:Premature optimization.... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 2, Funny

    Somewhere, a comedian cries. Not sure if it's from your missing it or the original joke.

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.