Google Chrome's Beats Others at JavaScript Performance

With Google Chrome released, one of its most awesome features is the excellent JavaScript performance. It is a complete new re-write of the JavaScript VM and uses what is called the V8 Engine by the Google developers who worked on the new JavaScript engine. Here is a JavaScript Performance Analysis for developers to look at comparing different browsers.

Google uses a lot of AJAX and the new V8 engine is the king in JavaScript performance done using Dromaeo :

Browser	Time (lower the better)
Chrome 0.2.149.27	488.80ms
Firefox 3.0.1	1775.00ms
Opera 9.52	1767.60ms
Safari 3.1.2	2075.00ms

The memory usage of Chrome is also pretty good and the built-in task manager for looking at the memory/CPU usage of tabs is interesting and useful. It can also help in analyzing which tab is creating some kind of menace or using more memory. You can close that tab and get some free memory. This is just an initial preview, but the JavaScript performance is top-notch!!

Webkit Winning in Dromaeo - Mozilla's JavaScript Benchmark

Benchmarking is always an interesting topic of debate and especially when you have a cult-feeling around a product, it fun to watch. With the Race to ACID3 over, there is another hot topic of discussion going on in the world of web browsers. And it's JavaScript that is in question. Dromaeo is Mozilla's JavaScript Benchmark Test and I happen to put all the popular browsers on the burner!

JavaScript is an important component in today's web. It's used all over the web and is de-facto standard for browser-side execution. It's used through a lot of frameworks like YUI, Prototype, Dojo, jQuery etc. And then there is AJAX, which uses JavaScript at its base. Thus, when you compare browsers, checking the JavaScript performance makes some sense.

There are a few popular ones for testing JavaScript performance. Infact, you could even write a few of your own and test, but I would recommend one of the popular ones that try to replicate real-world experiences. There is the popular JavaScript test from Webkit called SunSpider. You can find a good comparison of the browsers on that test at CyberNet. I found Mozilla's Dromaeo to be another benchmark which seems to do a lot of things like you would do in the real-world. The following are the browser results from the benchmark.

Browser (version + build)	Total Time for Test (click on the timings for detail)
Safari nighly (Webkit r31368)	1805.40ms (Total)
Firefox 3 pre-beta 5 (2008032005)	1855.20ms (Total)
Safari 3.1 (525.13)	2000.80ms (Total)
Opera 9 Beta (WinGogi: build 636)	2625.00ms (Total)
Opera 9.26 (build 8835)	4158.80ms (Total)
Firefox 2.0.0.13 (release)	7897.40ms (Total)
Internet Explorer 7 (7.0.6001.18000)	Unknown (didn't have the patience)

Note: Your results may vary due to various reasons, but the ranking would nearly (tough one between WebKit & FF3) be the same.

IE7 had a hard time completing the benchmark (I couldn't wait for it to complete) and as the Mozilla Wiki on the test mentions, it is a problem with IE7. I couldn't do the test on Konqueror as my Linux box has some issues booting up.

Among other things, the test goes to show the performance increase in Firefox 3. Thus, it is the right time for Mozilla to publicize the improvement in JavaScript performance and thus, I guess they have released this benchmark. Webkit and Firefox 3 are pretty much on the heels of each other in this test. Firefox 3 has also made some progress on decreasing the memory it uses when lots of tabs are open. This should give the Mozilla team something to cheer about after they said sour grapes with not participating in the ACID3 race.

Opera Reaches 100/100 ACID3, But Will Webkit Release First

Update: Webkit's latest build has passed ACID3 with 100/100 and is rendering it pixel perfect as well with r31356.

Update 2: Opera has released the WinGogi build that passes the test. The build can be downloaded here: Windows, Linux. (Its really not a browser and has some problems...)

ACID3 was released just a few days back and I had written about the Race to ACID3. And Indeed, it "was" a fast race!! Did I just say "was"?? Yes, we can all start to guess the winner of the race and it seems Opera is the first to announce it has reached 100/100 on the test. But it really isn't about what the devs say, I'm gonna give the cup to them only when they release the working preview to the world.

The good news is that WebKit (aka Safari nightly) isn't behind. It has reached 98/100 on the latest build. This isn't much of a surprise since they have been going fast on the development in winning the race. They have been regularly updating the world on what's the condition of compatibility to ACID3 and giving nightly (compiled every night) builds to download.

And thus we come to conclude that whether it will be the open-source project of WebKit that will release its nightly that reaches 100/100 or Opera which is closed source and may require some effort to put its build out to the world. Opera has it running on a test HTML renderer app for Windows called WinGogi and not on the Opera browser. I bet on Opera winning this one, coz it really shouldn't take much time to package the renderer once the hard part of flushing the bugs have been done... But did I say underestimate the strength of the community ??