

Javascript TRS-80 Performance: Firefox, IE9 still slow - pnp
http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~pphillip/trs80-timing.html

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Groxx
> _I'm surprised by Firefox 4's performance. The Mozilla web pages claim to be
> matching or surpassing Chrome's speed but my measurements show them to be a
> lot slower._

Having recently done some benchmarking of my own code, and from simply running
the browsers side-by-side a fair bit, this doesn't surprise me a bit. Firefox
4 consistently comes out 3x slower _or worse_ than Chrome/Safari (I don't have
Opera handy). I keep seeing claims, I keep seeing benchmarks, but I've never
been able to replicate their results with _any_ code I've written.
_Significantly_ faster than FF3, don't get me wrong, but they've still got a
fair distance to go if they want to claim faster-than-WebKit.

I quite like this benchmark setup. Real-world results, split by display time.
Nice writeup!

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robin_reala
I’m not denying your results, but Webkit has nothing to do with the JS
execution speed: Chrome and Safari use completely different JS engines and it
doesn’t make sense to talk about ‘Webkit’ in this context.

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Groxx
Good point. I'll clarify: Safari, WebKit nightlies, and Chrome perform very
similarly in many cases, and tend to be faster than anyone else.

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v413
He meant that, as far as the tests in the main article, Webkit has nothing to
do with the results. Chrome uses the V8 javascript engine, Safari uses the
Nitro javascript engine, while the webkit project are building their own
javascript engine - Squirellfish.

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blasdel
Nitro is what Squirrelfish was renamed in Apple's marketing materials after
they shipped it in Safari.

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spitfire
I like this because it clearly shows just how horribly bad web technologies
really are. I used to say the web turned your computer into an IBM 3070 with a
386 under the hood.

Now I'll say the web turns your computer into an IBM 3070 with a TRS-80 under
the hood.

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kam
That's also because it's an emulator. A TRS-80 surely couldn't emulate itself
at full speed.

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pohl
I grew up on Galaxy Invasion and SubLogic's Flight Simulator. (Too bad they
don't have that one available on the emulator page.)

 _I'm interested to see what changes with the 4.2 OS soon to be released._

I'd like to see that, too. I wrote Peter an email to ask if he'd gotten a
chance to do that.

~~~
pnp
I'll update after I get my iPad upgraded. My guess is there will be little
difference.

I didn't mention in the article, but I have run the emulator on the Wii's
Opera browser and the PS3--both slow but the Wii is much faster. The XBOX360
hasn't heard about the WWW yet.

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kendowns
SEA DRAGON!!! WOOOO!!!!

