Speedup ahead for Google Chrome

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 11:12

Business IT - Technology

New features coming to Google's Chrome browser will deliver significant performance improvements for JavaScript-heavy pages and make searching speedier.

Google also announced that a couple of Chrome features currently only available in beta and developer builds will soon appear in the general release.

An improved V8 JavaScript engine runs complex JavaScript programs up to twice as fast as before. This is achieved by Crankshaft, V8's new compilation infrastructure. It works by compiling JavaScript twice as quickly as the previous V8 compiler, identifying the portions of the code that are most active and then optimising those portions.

In addition to running complex JaxaScripts more quickly, Crankshaft also improves the startup time for web applications. According to Google officials, pages with significant amounts of JavaScript load 12% more quickly.

The other change is the addition of Google Instant to the Omnibox to show search results and load web pages while a query is being typed.

No specific indication was given of the likely arrival time of these features.