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Firefox Gets Massive JavaScript Performance Boost

Posted by Soulskill on from the firefox-has-a-caffeine-buzz dept.

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.

4 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As fast as C code??? by Matt+Perry · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So why not write it in C in the first place? Then one could really optimize it.

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  2. Re:Java/C#/C++/C equally fast by pinkfloydhomer · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I can't speak to the C# benchmark, but I can't imagine any case where C++ would outperform C in straightforward computation.

    Funny that you can't imagine that.

  3. OK.... by crhylove · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But I don't think I use javascript for ANYTHING. I do however use Flash. Any word on a flash fix?

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  4. Re:Javascript has nothing to do with Java. by mstahl · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I think the name Javascript is unfortunate that way. It's really only vaguely similar in syntax to Java, and lacks most of the functionality of Javascript. Really what needs to happen is a complete re-work of how Javascript is interpreted in browsers. So, getting back on-topic here, I think this is a wonderful start.

    Oh and once again don't dump on us web programmers. Some of us are just as 1337 as you are we just do different things with our awesome coding abilities. And hey without us professionals the whole web would be made by 14-year-olds so don't complain too much.