How fast is Google Chrome, really?

Three JavaScript benchmarks show wildly different results

Senior Reporter, Computerworld |

Although Google'due south latest version of Chrome proved faster than earlier editions in some JavaScript benchmark tests, the browser barely exceeded its predecessors in some other, co-ordinate to Computerworld's tests.

On Tuesday, Google touted a new optimization technology, dubbed "Crankshaft," that it added to Chrome's V8 JavaScript rendering engine, proverb that the improver significantly boosted its browser's operation.

Google engineers claimed that Crankshaft raised Chrome's scores in the V8 benchmark past l%. "This is the biggest functioning improvement since we launched Chrome in 2008," said Kevin Millikin and Florian Schneider, in a mail to the Chromium weblog Tuesday.

V8 is Google'due south own JavaScript criterion suite.

Computerworld ran several versions of Chrome iii times each through V8 on a Windows Vista PC, and then averaged the 3 scores.

Chrome'south "canary" build -- the least stable and most avant-garde version of the browser -- was xl.5% faster than the "dev" edition and 43.5% faster than the current "stable" version.

Chrome's canary build is marked as version 10, while the dev and stable editions are versions 9 and eight, respectively. The canary edition is the merely currently-bachelor version of Chrome that incorporates Crankshaft.

Chrome canary also showed impressive speed improvements over earlier editions in Kraken, the JavaScript benchmark created by rival browser maker Mozilla. Co-ordinate to Kraken, Chrome canary was 55.three% faster at rendering JavaScript than the dev build, and 51.2% faster than the stable edition.

In a 3rd criterion suite, however, the Crankshaft-equipped canary build proved just marginally faster than other versions of Google's browser. SunSpider scores showed that the canary edition was just 2.2% faster than the dev build and just 3.five% faster than the stable version of Chrome.

SunSpider, created by the WebKit project -- the open-source foundation of both Chrome and Apple'southward Safari -- is the most widely-cited JavaScript benchmark.

Google's Millikin and Schneider explained the pocket-sized gains in SunSpider in their weblog post Tuesday.

"The idea [in Crankshaft] is to heavily optimize code that is frequently executed and not waste time optimizing lawmaking that is not," the two engineers said. "Because of this, benchmarks that finish in just a few milliseconds, such as SunSpider, will show little improvement with Crankshaft. The more piece of work an awarding does, the bigger the gains volition exist."

In the V8 tests, Chrome's canary build was over twice as fast every bit Firefox iv current beta and Opera Software'south Opera 11 preview. When pitted against Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) beta, Chrome was more than five times faster.

Of course, JavaScript benchmarks aren't the just measure of a browser's speed, a fact that Microsoft has repeatedly pointed out even as it's cited SunSpider results IE9.

Concluding month, Dean Hachamovitch, a Microsoft executive who leads IE development, dismissed browser benchmarks every bit "at best, not very useful, and at worst, misleading. There's more to real world performance than JavaScript."

Users tin can switch to Chrome canary, which is bachelor only for Windows, by downloading that edition from Google's site.

Chrome speed chart
Chrome'due south "canary" build was 40.five% than the "dev" edition in Google's ain V8 JavaScript benchmark tests. (In V8, higher scores are amend.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and full general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail service address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

Senior Reporter Gregg Keizer covers Windows, Function, Apple/enterprise, web browsers and web apps for Computerworld.

Copyright © 2010 IDG Communications, Inc.