Opera Javascript Comparison

Since I've been posting about javascript performance lately I thougt I would compare Opera v.9.52 JS performance to the current release of Xulrunner running under Epiphany 2.22. The results are mixed. Celtic Kane's javascript speed test shows results that best Gecko but not Webkit.



In comparison I was only able to achieve a score of 255 (lower is better) for the current Xulrunner. This looks good for Opera. Let's take a look at the sunspider benchmark now. Xulrunner is show in the FROM column while Opera is shown in the TO column.



As you can see Opera's javascript perfomance is significantly slower than Xulrunner's performance. I am a bit confused by the results considering Opera did pretty well in Celtic Kane's test and I have heard that Opera's JS performance is very good. My sunspider results were so out of whack from what I was expecting that I ran them again but the results were the same. I wonder if anyone else can confirm my findings.

Tracemonkey javascript performance

I thought that my comparison of the latest Webkit vs stable Gecko wasn't fair so I decided today to create an ebuild to fetch the latest xulrunner so I could test Tracemonkey. I had to tweak the ebuild a little (other than fetching with mercurial) because xulrunner would not compile with lcms enabled. I created another USE flag that toggles lcms. With this and some modification to the patch tarball I was able to build the latest xulrunner.

Here is my ebuild:

/usr/local/portage/net-libs/xulrunner/xulrunner-9999.ebuild

This ebuild requires the xulrunner.conf from the original ebuild files.

Next I launched Epiphany and typed "about:config". I searched for "jit" and then toggled "javascript.options.jit.content" to true and restarted my browser. Then I proceeded to run Celtic Kane's javascript speed test and the Sunspider Benchmark. Celtic Kane's test didn't show much of an improvement over the old javascript engine and didn't come close to Squirrelfish's performance. The result was a paltry 23ms decrease in time.



Maybe the Sunspider Benchmark would be different. Here is the comparison of the old Gecko JS engine and Tracemonkey. The old engine is under the FROM title and Tracemonkey is under TO.



We see some significant improvements over the old engine but we see some regression too. The overall picture shows us a slight improvement. Next let's compare Webkit's results to Tracemonkey. Here we have Webkit in the TO column and Tracemonky in the FROM column. Get ready for an all out browser war!



Yikes! That's disappointing. For all the noise we've heard about Tracemonkey these were not the results I was expecting. Squirrelfish is still eating it for lunch. I guess it's a good sign that Mozilla's numbers are improving but I have yet to see the performance they claim. There could be many reasons for this and I'm sure things will only improve but as it stands now I cannot achieve the kind of numbers I've seen put up on the web about Tracemonkey.

UPDATE: Apparently JIT cannot yet be enabled in 64-bit browsers so that is why perfromance is so close between the new Tracemonkey JS engine and the old one. When that changes I'll post a real performance comparison.

Webkit vs Gecko Javascript performance

If you haven't noticed I have a fascination with bleeding edge software. One of the pieces of software I have been following since its inception is the GTK port of Webkit. It is an excellent browser engine that is just as capable if not more so than other major competing engines. One of Webkit's strong points is javascript performance. The Squirrelfish javascript engine that was introduced a few months ago offers incredible performance.

To prove my point I tested the latest Webkit from subversion againt Xulrunner-1.9 using two different javascript tests. The first test is I used was Celtic Kane's Javascript speed test. I ran the test a couple dozen times on each browser. The Webkit based Midori browser scored an 89ms (lower is better) for its best case while the best I was able to acheive with Epiphany on Xulrunner was 255ms which makes it over 2.5 times slower. In fact Midori's worst time wasn't even close to Epiphany's best time. I took screenshots of the two best times I achieved. On the left are the results for Webkit/Midori while on the right are results for Gecko/Epiphany.

The second test I ran was Webkit's own Sunspider Javascript test. It is a much more complete javascript test and takes several minutes to complete. Again Webkit outshines Gecko in the Sunspider tests but the results are much closer. Webkit's javascript engine, Squirrelfish averages about 1.5 times faster than Gecko's engine. Webkit results are shown in the FROM column while Gecko results are in the TO column.



It seems this is all about to change. Firefox 3.1 is supposed to include a new and improved javascript engine called Tracemonkey that outshines Squirrelfish. It is not yet complete so it is hard to tell how much better it is actually going to be but preliminary tests show some amazing results. When I get a chance to test it I'll post another comparison.

With all the improvements going into both the Gecko engine and the Webkit engine it should make web browsing on either platfrom a much better experience. I do have to give the Mozilla foundation credit for Gecko. I was starting to prefer a Webkit based GNOME environment over embedded Gecko but Xulrunner-1.9/Firefox-3 was a very good release and the next release is only going to be better. Things are really heating up now in the browser wars again.

Opera Javascript Comparison

Since I've been posting about javascript performance lately I thougt I would compare Opera v.9.52 JS performance to the current release of Xulrunner running under Epiphany 2.22. The results are mixed. Celtic Kane's javascript speed test shows results that best Gecko but not Webkit.



In comparison I was only able to achieve a score of 255 (lower is better) for the current Xulrunner. This looks good for Opera. Let's take a look at the sunspider benchmark now. Xulrunner is show in the FROM column while Opera is shown in the TO column.



As you can see Opera's javascript perfomance is significantly slower than Xulrunner's performance. I am a bit confused by the results considering Opera did pretty well in Celtic Kane's test and I have heard that Opera's JS performance is very good. My sunspider results were so out of whack from what I was expecting that I ran them again but the results were the same. I wonder if anyone else can confirm my findings.

Tracemonkey javascript performance

I thought that my comparison of the latest Webkit vs stable Gecko wasn't fair so I decided today to create an ebuild to fetch the latest xulrunner so I could test Tracemonkey. I had to tweak the ebuild a little (other than fetching with mercurial) because xulrunner would not compile with lcms enabled. I created another USE flag that toggles lcms. With this and some modification to the patch tarball I was able to build the latest xulrunner.

Here is my ebuild:

/usr/local/portage/net-libs/xulrunner/xulrunner-9999.ebuild

This ebuild requires the xulrunner.conf from the original ebuild files.

Next I launched Epiphany and typed "about:config". I searched for "jit" and then toggled "javascript.options.jit.content" to true and restarted my browser. Then I proceeded to run Celtic Kane's javascript speed test and the Sunspider Benchmark. Celtic Kane's test didn't show much of an improvement over the old javascript engine and didn't come close to Squirrelfish's performance. The result was a paltry 23ms decrease in time.



Maybe the Sunspider Benchmark would be different. Here is the comparison of the old Gecko JS engine and Tracemonkey. The old engine is under the FROM title and Tracemonkey is under TO.



We see some significant improvements over the old engine but we see some regression too. The overall picture shows us a slight improvement. Next let's compare Webkit's results to Tracemonkey. Here we have Webkit in the TO column and Tracemonky in the FROM column. Get ready for an all out browser war!



Yikes! That's disappointing. For all the noise we've heard about Tracemonkey these were not the results I was expecting. Squirrelfish is still eating it for lunch. I guess it's a good sign that Mozilla's numbers are improving but I have yet to see the performance they claim. There could be many reasons for this and I'm sure things will only improve but as it stands now I cannot achieve the kind of numbers I've seen put up on the web about Tracemonkey.

UPDATE: Apparently JIT cannot yet be enabled in 64-bit browsers so that is why perfromance is so close between the new Tracemonkey JS engine and the old one. When that changes I'll post a real performance comparison.

Webkit vs Gecko Javascript performance

If you haven't noticed I have a fascination with bleeding edge software. One of the pieces of software I have been following since its inception is the GTK port of Webkit. It is an excellent browser engine that is just as capable if not more so than other major competing engines. One of Webkit's strong points is javascript performance. The Squirrelfish javascript engine that was introduced a few months ago offers incredible performance.

To prove my point I tested the latest Webkit from subversion againt Xulrunner-1.9 using two different javascript tests. The first test is I used was Celtic Kane's Javascript speed test. I ran the test a couple dozen times on each browser. The Webkit based Midori browser scored an 89ms (lower is better) for its best case while the best I was able to acheive with Epiphany on Xulrunner was 255ms which makes it over 2.5 times slower. In fact Midori's worst time wasn't even close to Epiphany's best time. I took screenshots of the two best times I achieved. On the left are the results for Webkit/Midori while on the right are results for Gecko/Epiphany.

The second test I ran was Webkit's own Sunspider Javascript test. It is a much more complete javascript test and takes several minutes to complete. Again Webkit outshines Gecko in the Sunspider tests but the results are much closer. Webkit's javascript engine, Squirrelfish averages about 1.5 times faster than Gecko's engine. Webkit results are shown in the FROM column while Gecko results are in the TO column.



It seems this is all about to change. Firefox 3.1 is supposed to include a new and improved javascript engine called Tracemonkey that outshines Squirrelfish. It is not yet complete so it is hard to tell how much better it is actually going to be but preliminary tests show some amazing results. When I get a chance to test it I'll post another comparison.

With all the improvements going into both the Gecko engine and the Webkit engine it should make web browsing on either platfrom a much better experience. I do have to give the Mozilla foundation credit for Gecko. I was starting to prefer a Webkit based GNOME environment over embedded Gecko but Xulrunner-1.9/Firefox-3 was a very good release and the next release is only going to be better. Things are really heating up now in the browser wars again.