The recent release of Google Chrome Beta for Windows has re-stirred the good old browser wars. Chrome is based on WebKit, but uses the V8 Javascript Engine Currently Chrome is a Windows only browser, so it is not possible for me to benchmark the browser first hand, but the claims have been that it is faster than both Firefox and WebKit on Windows.
Those are pretty bold claims, especially since the folks over at WebKit just released the SquirrelFish Extreme Javascript engine. Based on my initial personal non-scientific benchmarks, it looks fast! Almost 2x’s as fast as the previous SquirrelFish implementation. See the results below.
After using WebKit for the past two months it is clear to me, WebKit is the best browser for me on Mac. There is one small issue with using WebKit, namely, since you are running a nightly build, you need download and update the binary quite often, and some of the time, the daily build is not the stablest. Again, this is just a minor price to pay in order to take advantage of the latest and greatest build. It is nothing specific to WebKit, it applies to any beta software.
Latest Results
TEST COMPARISON FROM TO
(SquirrelFish) (SquirrelFish Extreme)
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** TOTAL **: 1.86x as fast 1918.6ms +/- 0.9% 1032.6ms +/- 1.4%
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3d: 1.59x as fast 260.6ms +/- 2.9% 164.2ms +/- 4.6%
cube: 1.53x as fast 84.2ms +/- 5.9% 55.2ms +/- 4.3%
morph: 1.36x as fast 82.8ms +/- 2.0% 61.0ms +/- 4.8%
raytrace: 1.95x as fast 93.6ms +/- 4.3% 48.0ms +/- 11.1%
access: 2.49x as fast 280.2ms +/- 4.1% 112.4ms +/- 6.0%
binary-trees: 1.64x as fast 36.0ms +/- 15.1% 22.0ms +/- 22.2%
fannkuch: 4.76x as fast 88.6ms +/- 3.8% 18.6ms +/- 9.0%
nbody: 2.03x as fast 124.8ms +/- 7.3% 61.6ms +/- 2.3%
bitops: 2.31x as fast 188.8ms +/- 4.5% 81.8ms +/- 9.9%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 1.96x as fast 26.6ms +/- 13.5% 13.6ms +/- 24.7%
bits-in-byte: 1.96x as fast 32.6ms +/- 8.8% 16.6ms +/- 22.2%
bitwise-and: 1.77x as fast 54.8ms +/- 4.4% 31.0ms +/- 15.5%
nsieve-bits: 3.63x as fast 74.8ms +/- 14.5% 20.6ms +/- 15.7%
controlflow: 1.35x as fast 27.0ms +/- 22.6% 20.0ms +/- 19.2%
recursive: 1.35x as fast 27.0ms +/- 22.6% 20.0ms +/- 19.2%
crypto: 1.98x as fast 129.6ms +/- 7.7% 65.4ms +/- 6.7%
aes: 2.51x as fast 45.6ms +/- 14.8% 18.2ms +/- 24.3%
md5: 1.74x as fast 39.6ms +/- 14.8% 22.8ms +/- 6.0%
sha1: 1.82x as fast 44.4ms +/- 27.6% 24.4ms +/- 6.8%
date: 1.78x as fast 172.6ms +/- 2.6% 96.8ms +/- 2.9%
format-tofte: 2.42x as fast 105.2ms +/- 3.5% 43.4ms +/- 3.3%
format-xparb: 1.26x as fast 67.4ms +/- 5.6% 53.4ms +/- 5.8%
math: 1.50x as fast 206.6ms +/- 4.1% 138.0ms +/- 1.7%
cordic: 1.59x as fast 67.6ms +/- 5.9% 42.4ms +/- 4.4%
partial-sums: 1.45x as fast 97.8ms +/- 3.7% 67.6ms +/- 3.6%
spectral-norm: 1.47x as fast 41.2ms +/- 8.6% 28.0ms +/- 6.3%
regexp: 4.27x as fast 198.8ms +/- 1.6% 46.6ms +/- 6.4%
dna: 4.27x as fast 198.8ms +/- 1.6% 46.6ms +/- 6.4%
string: 1.48x as fast 454.4ms +/- 1.6% 307.4ms +/- 2.4%
base64: 2.56x as fast 64.6ms +/- 4.0% 25.2ms +/- 10.7%
fasta: 1.43x as fast 85.4ms +/- 3.4% 59.6ms +/- 5.6%
tagcloud: 1.14x as fast 112.0ms +/- 7.2% 98.2ms +/- 2.7%
unpack-code: 1.75x as fast 118.6ms +/- 3.4% 67.8ms +/- 3.0%
validate-input: 1.30x as fast 73.8ms +/- 4.0% 56.6ms +/- 9.5%