back to article Firefox engine speeds past Chrome after Jager shot

Mozilla has claimed the fastest SunSpider scores on the planet, after internal tests showed that its latest Firefox JavaScript engine — which includes the new JagerMonkey extension — outperforms both Google Chrome's V8 engine and Apple Safari's Nitro. Director of community development Asa Dotzler made the claim on Monday …

COMMENTS

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  1. Renato
    Thumb Up

    Faster?

    Let's hope it doesn't get its speed using 100% CPU on all cores.

  2. Tom 7

    Maybe its just me

    but (apart from Google Wave and looping code) I've not had any JavaScript speed problems - except when running speed tests.

    Any slow JavaScript seems to be down to the cross site calls, something that can only be speeded up with noscript blocking or similar - the fastes machinein the world can seem to speed up google analytics or some crap advertising implant.

    Even my own browser based code editor that I know contains lousy code works well enough on my old Duron based test machine.

    1. Ammaross Danan
      Go

      Title

      Casual browsing may not have many instances of javscript bogginess, but in the world of rich browser applications, javascript can have many bottlenecks. I'm aware of a browser-based game that uses javascript extensively for "world map" data and image placement, client-side html generation, etc (basically everything between <body> and </body>) and it runs terribly under IE8 (obviously) but plays tolerably under FF3.6. Speeding up Javascript will only make these things more commonplace, requiring faster javascript execution, enabling more..etc.etc...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Call me when it's faster than Opera...

    in not just Sunspider, which a wide range of benchmarks and real-world browsing situations, as other benchmarks put Firefox 4 massively behind Chrome and Opera.

    1. pepejeria
      WTF?

      Re:

      What other benchmarks?

  4. Patrick O'Reilly
    Coat

    Yea but....

    But doesn't Opera have the fastest Javascript engine with Carakan?

    Hence shouldn't it be the yardstick applied to such trials?

    1. Nick
      Unhappy

      yeah but...

      (unfortunately) no one uses Opera.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "No one"

        Yes, true enough, if by "no one", you mean "140 MILLION Opera users and growing."

        http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/opera-releases-massive-usage-stats-announces-opera-mobile-browser-for-android-10280/

        1. Someone Else Silver badge
          WTF?

          In other words...

          ...half the TOTal population of the U.S.?!?

          /me scoffs

    2. pepejeria
      Pint

      Re:

      > But doesn't Opera have the fastest Javascript engine with Carakan?

      No

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Indeed

      Which makes this news farcical.

      My car is also the fastest car in the world. I tested it myself against a Sinclair C5, a Mini Metro running on most of it's cylinders, and a Fiat 500.

      I couldn't lay my hands on a Enzo, so I didn't bother testing it against that.

  5. DrXym

    Good results, but note shell only

    It is important to remember on most websites that without user interaction the content is largely static. Typically things only happen when a) the page is first loaded, or b) the user does something like mouseover or click on an element which has attached JS. When either of these things happens, the performance of is affected by JS, DOM, CSS, rendering API, layout, native event model, operating system, context switches etc.

    JS is an important component in this performance but in many cases the browser would spend a lot more time in the layout engine or the DOM code. The JS would just be a little glue which creates an element and sticks it in the document, or twiddles an attribute etc.

    Running from the shell is still a good test since it eliminates the other noise. I expect in practice that improving the JS engine would result in subtle improvements. The biggest winner is probably the browser itself since Firefox uses a lot of JS in its UI. Sites that drag in a lot of JS during startup (e.g. GWT, Dojo etc.) probably benefit a lot too.

  6. Russell Howe
    Go

    At this rate

    It'll be done before it starts in another 3 months' time

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Good news

    This only applies to x86 at the moment, 64bit lags a little behind.

    However, the real problem I've had with FF4b6 isn't speed on js heavy sites, it's stability. If they sort this out then they'll be on to a winner.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Speed?

    I don't know about anybody else, but I've never really had any browser speed problems. And if I had I don't think the tiny lead that Firefox now has over the competition (until next week, no doubt) would induce me to change.

    Indeed it is such a tiny advantage that I can't believe Mozilla are shouting about it. Basically the advantage is so small that all three browsers are, in effect, at the same level. As such Mozilla are basically saying "Look how great we are, we've caught up with the competition and we're just as good as them now." Not much of an advertising coup is it? "Buy a Vauxhall, it's just as good as the competion in some areas."

  9. Tom 13

    Have to agree with the posters noting the javascript speed of the browser

    is less of an issue than other factors in the environment. Only time mine is slow is when it is waiting for one of the damn Facebook.static pages to finish uploading its data to my pc. And I'm running the current standard install for FF, not the beta.

  10. JDX Gold badge

    re: speed

    pure JS speed isn't really important on regular websites, but to advanced web-apps and especially games... particularly with HTML5. Decent games will be more viable in pure JS/HTML5 at this time, and need performance to compete against Flash.

  11. Nerdo

    People are missing the point

    Mozilla has broader aspirations than running javascript trinket animations quickly. They envision that a more powerful javascript will lead people to writing more heavy duty programs in javascript to run in the browser.

    Take a look at their new and developing benchmark. Rather than running a couple dozen little code snippets dozens of times, many of which are done in a few milliseconds, their benchmark contains some long running javascript tests, like realtime image processing. In that context, the tracemonkey approach does better as it pays to invest more time in the compile and buy it back in the runtime. For their selected set of benchmarks, they are twice as fast as the others.

  12. Carol Orlowski
    FAIL

    When will El-Reg report this then?

    As clearly vendor benchmarking is the flavor of the month.

    http://files.myopera.com/EspenAO/files/benchmark_opera11.jpg

  13. Mage Silver badge

    Things like

    On page WYSIWG editors can be very slow Javascript.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you can't beat them...

    "This new method JIT compiler uses the Nitro assembler from Apple’s open source WebKit project, the same assembler used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari."

    In other words, Mozilla couldn't beat them, so they joined them!

    (not that there's anything wrong with that, but we're now down to only three assembers for javascript - SquirrelFish/Nitro, Carakan and Chakra)

  15. illiad

    KTguju: so do you have 'chrome' on your mobile???

    you are missing the point - the article is talking about DESKTOP computers... the only reason Opera on mobiles is so popular, is that the competition is so bad!!!

  16. illiad

    RE: speed??

    most guys running a new pc will have no problem I guess - but those on a budget, with an old P4 will notice how sluggish FF is against Opera - you dont need benchmarks to see it!

    the big problem with Opera, is the bad attitude of the managers - they remove good features that very old users love, and when we complain, they just ban us for disturbance!! this and a refusal to build in website compatibility or aggressively advertise, is why it stays almost unknown or given a bad rep...

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