SquirrelFish Extreme Accelerates JavaScript Even More
longer bars represent faster speeds
The Webkit blog has posted benchmarks on their "next generation" JavaScript interpreter called SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX). SquirrelFish Extreme uses "more advanced techniques" to deliver even faster JavaScript performance.
The new version of SquirrelFish is nearly twice as fast the first version of SquirrelFish which we previously reported on. It is also over three times faster then the current Safari 3.1 version that is available from Apple.
JavaScript is heavily used in many modern interactive websites, including Apple's own MobileMe web apps. Google is also investing heavily in improving JavaScript performance and is working on their own accelerated JavaScript interpreter called V8. According to one blog, SquirrelFish Extreme is 38% faster than the current version of V8.
SquirrelFish Extreme is available in the nightly betas of Webkit for personal testing, and should eventually make its way into future Safari releases.
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P-Worm
Is the speed of javascript really that much of a problem that we need it to be that much faster? I have no idea because I know nothing when it comes to javascript.
That's like asking if processor speeds are much of a problem. :)
I'm not sure it's so much of a problem, but people are using JavaScript for more intensive purposes (see mobileme). And faster is always better.
Also see:
http://www.harryguillermo.com/Pacman.aspx - PacMan in Javascript
http://280slides.com/ - "keynote"
arn
Anyone know if this is an Intel only technology?
It will surely be ported to ARM for the iPhone.
Anyone know if this is an Intel only technology?
Sort of:
Currently the code is limited to x86 32-bit, but we plan to refactor and add support for more CPU architectures. CPUs that are not yet supported by the JIT can still use the interpreter. We also think we can get a lot more speedups out of the JIT through techniques such as type specialization, better register allocation and liveness analysis. The SquirrelFish bytecode is a good representation for making many of these kinds of transforms.
In addition, we’re interested in having JIT back ends for other CPU architectures.
The JIT is limited to x86 processors at the moment, but they're intending to add more as they go, and other elements of the improvements to the interpreter are available regardless of platform.
Anyone know if this is an Intel only technology?
At the moment the native code generation only supports Intel 32-bit but they are working on expanding support out to other processors. On non-Intel 32b systems you will fallback to the improved SquirrelFish "direct threading" byte-code interpreter which is fast but slower then the native code generation JIT.All other improvements in SFX should work on non-Intel systems as I read things.
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