8 ms·

A Hidden Cost of Javascript [updated]

50 points by aristus 17y ago

aristus 17y ago
The exact versions of the browsers are available when you mouse over the column headers.
pietro 17y ago
Chrome is exceptionally fast, apparently.
- aristus 17y ago
  It does appear fast, but I'm withholding judgement. I'm not certain if it's doing caching tricks or whether their parser really is 10x faster. It certainly is CPU-bound, which is as good as it gets, and it's more stable in terms of memory use. See this graph: http://carlos.bueno.org/images/chrome-cliff.png http://carlos.bueno.org/images/chrome-cliff.png
docgnome 17y ago
Sorta looks to me to confirm something we already knew, V8 blows everything else away.
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
It's notable how little FF improved between 3.5 and 3.6.
- sp332 17y ago
  The big improvements in JS performance in 3.6 were in regex, GC, and tracing. Edit: details at http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in-firefox-3-6/ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in-fire...
- ionfish 17y ago
  Animation in FF 3.6 is noticeably smoother, apparently due to the improvements in GC. In other words, it may not have improved much in the specific areas these benchmarks measure, but it's important not to take that to mean that the JS engine didn't improve.
gleb 17y ago
JS loading is slow in FF, but the real killer is anything DOM related. On large pages this is measured in seconds not milliseconds. The worst part is that it scales non-linearly with # of DOM nodes on the page, # of DOM nodes loaded in other tabs in FF, how long it's been running and who knows what else. The longer FF works on improvements on benchmarks on which it is already fast, the more market share Chrome will take by making fast things that actually matter.
- gruseom 17y ago
  I agree 100% and have been complaining about exactly this for a long time (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325742). The fact that IE is the whipping-boy of the web community has caused Firefox to get more of a free ride than it deserves. That will eventually change.
gridspy 17y ago
Some really nice timing graphs at the end there.

50 points by aristus 17y ago

aristus 17y ago

The exact versions of the browsers are available when you mouse over the column headers.

pietro 17y ago

Chrome is exceptionally fast, apparently.

aristus 17y ago
It does appear fast, but I'm withholding judgement. I'm not certain if it's doing caching tricks or whether their parser really is 10x faster. It certainly is CPU-bound, which is as good as it gets, and it's more stable in terms of memory use. See this graph: http://carlos.bueno.org/images/chrome-cliff.png http://carlos.bueno.org/images/chrome-cliff.png

docgnome 17y ago

Sorta looks to me to confirm something we already knew, V8 blows everything else away.

ShabbyDoo 17y ago

It's notable how little FF improved between 3.5 and 3.6.

sp332 17y ago
The big improvements in JS performance in 3.6 were in regex, GC, and tracing. Edit: details at http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in-firefox-3-6/ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in-fire...
ionfish 17y ago
Animation in FF 3.6 is noticeably smoother, apparently due to the improvements in GC. In other words, it may not have improved much in the specific areas these benchmarks measure, but it's important not to take that to mean that the JS engine didn't improve.

gleb 17y ago

JS loading is slow in FF, but the real killer is anything DOM related. On large pages this is measured in seconds not milliseconds. The worst part is that it scales non-linearly with # of DOM nodes on the page, # of DOM nodes loaded in other tabs in FF, how long it's been running and who knows what else. The longer FF works on improvements on benchmarks on which it is already fast, the more market share Chrome will take by making fast things that actually matter.

gruseom 17y ago
I agree 100% and have been complaining about exactly this for a long time (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325742). The fact that IE is the whipping-boy of the web community has caused Firefox to get more of a free ride than it deserves. That will eventually change.

gridspy 17y ago

Some really nice timing graphs at the end there.