Is Chrome Overtaking Firefox as Power Users' Browser of Choice?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 23rd Sep 2010 21:36 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
Internet & Networking Now this is a subject sure to cause some discussion among all of you. LifeHacker's Adam Pash is arguing that Chrome has overtaken Firefox as the browser of choice for what he calls 'power users'; polls among LifeHacker's readership indeed seem to confirm just that. He also gives a number of reasons as to why this is the case.
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RE[3]: javascript speed
by jacquouille on Fri 24th Sep 2010 18:06 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: javascript speed"
jacquouille
Member since:
2006-01-02

"Actually, method JITs like v8 will never even approach native speed, and here's why. Native code knows the _type_ of the data it's manipulating, so it can pick the right assembly instruction at compile-time. But in Javascript, which is a dynamic language where types can change at any time during execution, that's not possible. So yes, v8 is an insanely fast method JIT for Javascript, but don't expect it to go at more than 10% of the speed of well-written native (say, C or C++) code.

Yes, as i understand it the way method JITs get around this is by implementing stub code for multiple types. So "x + y" javascript code generates native code for both integer and string addition, and then the correct path is chosen at runtime. "

... but just choosing this at runtime can easily kill performance ;) Also, if you have N variables and they can each have P different types, you have P^N cases to compile code for.

I'm curious, with the typed arrays doesn't the method JIT compiler have all the information it needs? It seems like that would be the one place where Tracemonkey wouldn't be able to improve upon.


You might have a good point there :-) At least for code manipulating only typed arrays. But when an arithmetic operations involves both typed arrays and other JS variables, my concern is that the lack of typing of the JS variable would hurt performance.

Also, i was wondering if Chrome/Webkit have implemented this yet or if their WebGL code was still using standard float arrays?


Typed arrays (and WebGL) are definitely already implemented in WebKit.

Looking at the gains made on sunspider over the last few weeks from an external perspective it doesn't look like Firefox is improving much there at all, but perhaps that's wrong.


Have you tried since Jaegermonkey was merged 2 weeks ago? See http://arewefastyet.com for benchmark results.

I assumed it was an issue of overhead, that Firefox could do well on longer running tests where tracemonkey had a better chance of improving the code, but that short tests like sunspider favored newer javascript architectures with cleaner code and less overhead.


Sunspider is indeed too short running to give Tracemonkey a good chance. Good thing we have Jaegermonkey :-)

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