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Revamped WebKit JavaScript Engine Doubles In Speed

Posted by Soulskill on from the upgrades dept.

Shin-LaC writes "In a post on their official blog, WebKit developers introduced the 'next generation' of their JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, claimed to be twice as fast as its predecessor. The post lists several changes contributing to the performance improvements, including 'bytecode optimization,' a 'polymorphic inline cache' (which sounds similar to V8's 'hidden class transitions'), and a 'context threaded JIT' compiler which generates native code (currently only for x86 processors), and is also applied to regular expressions. The new JavaScript engine is already available in the latest WebKit nightly builds. According to comparative benchmarks, the new engine is around 35% faster than the V8 engine recently introduced in Google Chrome, and 55% faster than Mozilla's TraceMonkey."

8 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Bar graphs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As you can see in this bar graph, our bar is bigger than our competitors' bars.

    1. Re:Bar graphs... by Kooty-Sentinel · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'd prefer to go to a Chinese restaurant and eat some freshly slaughtered TraceMonkey. And for drinks I'd just like some V8.

      --
      Your evaluation period for Productivity 1.0 has ended. Please purchase more coffee to continue using this product.
  2. Mmm... by actionbastard · · Score: 5, Funny

    'bytecode optimized polymorphic inline cache'.

    --
    Sig this!
  3. Re:Competition by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is a wonderful example of what happens when there are open standards and healthy competition! The consumer is the winner!

    Is that why /. "consumers" mostly use NoScript?
    Malware: Now 35% faster.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  4. Re:Faster = more memory? by DiegoBravo · · Score: 4, Funny

    And they have plans to run Firefox 5.x in a Commodore 64.

  5. "V8" is so 90s by Graywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Between TraceMonkey and SquirrelFish, "V8" seems so... weird. They better give it s regular, modern name like ThreadMole or SkunkAmoeba.

  6. Re:Tracemonkey is slower than V8? by flooey · · Score: 5, Funny

    (the engines won't get any slower)

    Clearly you haven't seen the plans for IE9.

  7. The E-Penis Measure by teko_teko · · Score: 5, Funny

    By using Chrome as your preferred browser, your E-Penis will increase by a whopping 74%.