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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.
(fruity announcer's voice)
This moment of lost productivity is brought to you by...
JAVA...
It's what makes you wait!
(/voice)
Boosting Java performance is #1, but boosting compatibility would be even better. Nothing is worse than having to maintain multiple tens of thousands of desktops to run various versions of Java, depending on which application one wishs to run, and figuring out which version is better supported and making that all happen without the user being involved.
Welcome to my nightmare!
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Red herring number 1. Deliberate misdirection, moderate "Offtopic".
Of all the anonymous cowards on this thread, only one is honest and worth reading, to wit:
"Expect this discussion to be full of astroturf, red herrings and trolls."
For years I have browsed slashdot with filters set to block anything below Score:5. The last couple of months--since I was first entrusted with some mod points now and again--I'm seeing everything, down to the -1 trolls...
Here's my quite-serious, tangentially-related, "Ask Slashdot"-style question: what has been the evolution of spam- and troll-filtering with the slashcode? And, perhaps more importantly: is there any cross-pollination between slashdot and spamassassin (and/or Spamhaus, etc.)?
It just seems to me that the semantic intelligence of spammers has risen exponentially in the last few years, and the slashcoders probably have some deep wisdom to offer. (To those who would call me a karma-whore, let me offer a pre-emptive "fuckyomamma.")
I very much look forward to any constructive comments when I get back from Burning Man. Peace out.