Mozilla: Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 RC Faster than Google Chrome

Shiretoko is leaving the Google browser in the dust

September 4, Softpedia

Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko Alpha 2 Release Candidate is faster than Google Browser (Chrome), according to Brendan Eich, chief architect, Mozilla. The fact of the matter is that the comparison involves only the two browsers' respective JavaScript rendering engines, namely TraceMonkey for Firefox and V8 for Chrome. In the first tests Eich ran with the two JavaScript engines on SunSpider, Shiretoko Alpha 2 RC managed to come on top of Google Chrome Beta.

"We win by 1.28x and 1.19x, respectively. Maybe we should rename TraceMonkey "V10." OK, it's only SunSpider, one popular yet arguably non-representative benchmark suite. We are not about to be braggy. "Don't be braggy" is our motto here at Mozilla," Eich stated.

Google Chrome comes with the V8 virtual machine, which is essentially an open source JavaScript engine built at the Google office in Aarhus, Denmark. According to Google, the V8 JavaScript engine has been designed with nothing but performance in mind, especially when it comes down to the way it handles web-based applications.

"The cornerstones of the V8 design are: compilation of JavaScript source code directly into native machine code; an efficient memory management system resulting in fast object allocation and small garbage collection pauses; and an introduction of hidden classes and inline caches that speed up property access and function calls," revealed Lars Bak, software engineer, Google.

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