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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.
Interestingly, one of the linked blogs talks about how this could lead to more of Firefox being written in Javascript. I haven't done much non-web related Javascript programming, and I haven't really used those new frameworks, but it seems to me like application programming in Javascript is like trying to hammer a nail with the handle of a screwdriver. Sure, it might work, but there are much better tools for the job. What do you guys think?
All your base are belong to Wii.
Now if we can just stop all the xss. Now it's just xss 20-40 times faster (in certain contexts).
Actually, if JS gets fast enough, it could rival Flash. This is a good thing.
THL phish sticks
Does that also mean it's NOT as fast as native C/C++ code because C# is blatantly not and thus is part of the marketing guff that you were gulliable to believe?
Next you'll be telling me Java hasn't got obscene memory requirements in comparison to native C/C++...
Firefox 3 already gave quite a nice performance boost to Javascript, enough to actually impress me (google maps is a great demonstration of this). It's good to see they haven't stopped there and are busy improving it further, a lot of software developers tend to spend too much time on making new features and not enough time fixing/optimising the existing one, but I think after the backlash from FF2's memory usage, Mozilla has rethought their priorities and I'm glad to say they're doing things right.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
It's kind of a non-sensical concept because Javascript as a language is capable of things C can't do, like eval new code at run time, modify existing types etc.
By the time you have a fair comparison (ie. written C code that can really do everything Javascript can), you have basically written Javascript itself in C. So all these comparisons are really just based on getting subsets of Javascript where it is really doing no more than plain C can do to run as fast as similar plain C, and guess what, that is done more or less by compiling said Javascript to native code.
I find it amusing that all these higher level languages (everything from Java, to Javascript to Python or VB) continuously promote how they are "nearly as fast as plain C now" but then a release or two rolls by and voila they suddenly announce they have improved performance by 10x or some similar metric. But when you ask the question, "oh, so are you 10x as fast as C now?", the reply will be "oh, no, but we're nearly as fast as C!"
Concurrency is another big win for interpreted (and to jit-ted code like Java) code. The compiler on the target machine gets to decide how to optimize the the code based on the number of processors.
So, _eventually_ C may be slower than JS/Python/Java. :)
And of course, as other pointed out the article says that JS is now getting compiled.
Life is just a conviction.
You are ABSOLUTELY wrong! C# by its very nature can not be as fast as C. There is no example you can provide where the running time of an optimized C version will be as fast or slower than the most optimized C# version. Even with JIT and supposed optimal native code generation for tight-loops there is no way you can get the same performance.
You are obviously just regurgitating MS marketing without thinking critically.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
http://psyco.sourceforge.net/
The really neat thing about it is that you can just load the module and call some functions, and it'll start JIT compiling your Python code for some moderate speedups (particularly string and number crunching). It doesn't need a special version of CPython or anything.
The original author is no longer developing it though -- he's working on PyPy, the Python interpreter/JIT written in Python. I think they're up to about half the speed of CPython, which is pretty impressive considering how slow Python is.
Does that also mean it's NOT as fast as native C/C++ code because C# is blatantly not and thus is part of the marketing guff that you were gulliable to believe?
Yes. Javascript will, just like C# or Java, be as fast as C/C++ in theory, and just like C# or Java, slower in practice.
On the bright side... Javascript will be as fast as C# or Java, which is certainly good enough for a lot of things.
I can't speak to the C# benchmark, but I can't imagine any case where C++ would outperform C in straightforward computation. The fact that you have C++ two seconds faster indicates to me an error margin of at least two seconds in your tests.
Does the DS have Age of Empires? FEAR? The simple fact is if I tried that the shop down the street would get the business and I am out on the street. You can't force your customers to take what they don't want. Rule One of Business: The customer is always right. I had four Linux boxes in the shop and had to reformat them because they were just gathering dust. The home user wants to be able to take the software he/she buys at Wal Mart and go "clicky clicky,next next next" and have it work,PERIOD. if it doesn't the machine is "broken" and it gets returned. And NOBODY wants to be handed a DS when they ask about games. Do you HONESTLY think if I did that to my customers they wouldn't just walk out?
This kind of attitude is EXACTLY why Linux has been stuck in the hobbyist section for so long. Instead of an honest discussion about what customers wants and needs you get told "Buy a PS3" or "stick with Winblowz". Guys like me would love to be able to sell easy to maintain Linux units,but the simple fact is we don't want to starve. My customers DON'T WANT a PS3,they want to pick up a game at Wal Mart and have it work. They DON'T WANT a $200 HP added to the price of the unit,they want to take their Lexmark all-in-one that they are quite happy with and have it work. If I was to adopt that elitist attitude my shop would be out of business in less than three months,instead of being busier than ever. Because I ask what they are going to do with their new PC and design it around their needs. Here is what I have found would be needed for Linux to take off in the home/small business sectors based on my customers:
1. VB6 support out of the box. Every single SMB I've ever done business with have one or more VB apps that are essential to the companies survival. No VB,no sale. 2. Windows software and games should be installable from the CD,especially games. If they pick up something at Wal Mart it had better work when they put in the disk. No easy way to install games? No sale. 3. An NDISWrapper for printers,especially those damned Lexmark all-in-ones. They are popular for a reason. They are cheap and give the folks what they want,an easy to use all-in-one printer/scanner/fax. No Lexmark support? No sale.
Without these 3 things I just can't give a Linux machine away. Folks simply don't want them. I have been able to sell the EEE because folks look at them as a "toy" that they don't expect to do the things a "real" computer can. But with a desktop they have expectations: they expect the software they buy to run,they expect the programs that their business depends on to work,and they expect their hardware like printers to just connect and go. Without that,they just sit there gathering dust. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And stay off the chans.
C# by its very nature can not be as fast as C
C#, once JIT'ed, is just a bunch of binary. C, when compiled, is also a bunch of binary. Given a theoretically perfect JIT compiler vs the theoretically perfect static compiler, they'll both output exactly the same code.
You are obviously just regurgitating anti-MS propoganda without thinking critically :P
(Note: I'm not saying that C# implementations are *currently* as fast as C ones, just that there's nothing to stop them becoming so in the future)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Doing anything that can be done server-side on the client side is generally a bad idea
Oh, I don't know - what about the simple stuff like form validation? On a high traffic site, receiving a complex form from a client, only to have to send a page back saying "sorry, you forgot this field,do it again" seems to be a waste of both the servers resources and the user's time. Better to just have a JS popup telling them and changing focus to the problem field - no effort on your server's part is needed.
Of course, double-check everything you get at the server, just give the client a chance to sort it out at their end first before troubling you with it.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.