Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft IE: SunSpider JavaScript performance test results

With the release of Google Chrome, JavaScript applications received a much needed performance boost. Google Chrome, the newly released open source web browser, incorporates a high performance JavaScript virtual machine called the V8. Mozilla is also working on including a high speed JavaScript engine called the TraceMonkey in its next release. Test results for Mozilla have shown almost 83% peformance improvement in JavaScript execution. So it seems that web applications that used JavaScript heavily have been breathed new life with the advent of these new breed browsers.

A very standard test for judgin JavaScript performance in web browsers is the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark tests. This benchmark tests the core of JavaScript and not the DOM or other things. The SunSpider tests focus different scenarios for JavaScript performance including 3D raytracing, cryptography, code decompression, etc. I ran the SunSpider test on recently released Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Google Chrome beat the competition hands down. The worst possible performance came for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It was way behind the others. 

Here’s a graphic showing the results in the different test categories:

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer performed the worst in the string manipulations test. Here are the full results of the test:

Category	Test	Google Chrome 0.2.149.27	Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1	Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
3d	Category Sub-total	91.4ms	301.8ms	1053.6ms
	cube	23.8ms	113.4ms	297.0ms
	morph	38.2ms	94.6ms	347.2ms
	raytrace	29.4ms	93.8ms	409.4ms
access	Category Sub-total	68.4ms	410.2ms	1540.0ms
	binary-trees	4.8ms	35.0ms	353.0ms
	fannkuch	23.2ms	212.6ms	618.8ms
	nbody	24.6ms	110.8ms	309.0ms
	nsieve	15.8ms	51.8ms	259.2ms
bitops	Category Sub-total	50.6ms	278.2ms	1393.8ms
	3bit-bits-in-byte	4.0ms	51.6ms	321.8ms
	bits-in-byte	9.2ms	81.6ms	344.0ms
	bitwise-and	14.2ms	63.8ms	412.6ms
	nsieve-bits	23.2ms	81.2ms	315.4ms
controlflow	Category Sub-total	3.0ms	33.2ms	387.6ms
	recursive	3.0ms	33.2ms	387.6ms
crypto	Category Sub-total	43.4ms	167.0ms	812.6ms
	aes	16.2ms	63.8ms	300.0ms
	md5	14.4ms	49.8ms	253.0ms
	sha1	12.8ms	53.4ms	259.6ms
date	Category Sub-total	220.8ms	211.2ms	687.4ms
	format-tofte	135.2ms	130.2ms	334.6ms
	format-xparb	85.6ms	81.0ms	352.8ms
math	Category Sub-total	87.4ms	299.0ms	953.6ms
	cordic	48.0ms	136.4ms	397.0ms
	partial-sums	29.4ms	101.0ms	253.2ms
	spectral-norm	10.0ms	61.6ms	303.4ms
regexp	Category Sub-total	304.2ms	198.8ms	296.8ms
	dna	304.2ms	198.8ms	296.8ms
string	Category Sub-total	418.8ms	610.4ms	14496.6ms
	base64	52.4ms	71.4ms	8106.4ms
	fasta	45.8ms	137.0ms	384.2ms
	tagcloud	115.0ms	105.0ms	1375.0ms
	unpack-code	147.8ms	213.6ms	384.4ms
	validate-input	57.8ms	83.4ms	4246.6ms
Total		1288.0ms	2509.8ms	21622.0ms