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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.
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!
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
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 :)
I am rubber, you are glue.