Firefox 18.0 Lets Loose IonMonkey Compiler

[Linuxhippy]

There is one major upside to only one process for the browser. It uses a LOT less RAM.

Furthermore, when looking at the +500mb RSS memory allocated by my currently running FF instance, I don't believe memory savings were the main motivation here ^^

[Linuxhippy]

There is one major upside to only one process for the browser. It uses a LOT less RAM.

Ok, lets talk about threads. As threads share the same process space, there is no real disadvanatge to use multiple threads - however, Firefox has an inherently single-threaded rendering model/engine.
Using multiple threads would allow multicore-CPUs to shine, and it would reduce the amount of stutter when one tab taxes the CPU,

[LinuxID10T]

There is one major upside to only one process for the browser. It uses a LOT less RAM.

[Linuxhippy]

Hmm .(

I just compared the two. Firefox 18 was actually slower than Firefox 17 running Sunspider

Actually the javascript disaster of Firefox is an example of really poor management.
I can't remember how often the code-generation stage got completely rewritten in the last couple of yours, and now basically they end up with something similar to V8 (developed by google).

For me the big question actually is:
- Why not opt for a clean design in the first place? Compiling dynamically typed languages is not something that has not been there before...
- Why not use the code developed by google? V8 simply is the fastest javascript runtime, and its open-source
The same basically goes for gecko. Why develop everything by yourself, when you can get it for free elsewhere. Actually gecko's clumsy codebase is the reason why firefox still does not have features like process-per-tab, and why a heavy web-app in one thread can destrroy the browsing experience of another tab (as everything is strictly single-threaded).

However, I still use FireFox as its graphic rendering engine based on Cairo is painting web-pages at light velocity when using intel's SNA drivers =)

[amehaye]

The problem with Firefox is not 'speed'. Well, not speed by their definition. The Mozilla team defines 'speed' in the sense of bandwidth: how many operations/second the browser is capable of bringing. This is the wrong definition for most users.

What the users talk about when they say 'speed' is actually latency, not bandwidth. I couldn't care less about the bandwidth of the JavaScript engine most of the day since I don't play games etc in the browser. What I do care about is the amount of time it takes to load a web page. This is 'latency', that is how long it takes from clicking a link to the page being fully rendered. In this test Chrome wins hands down.

Another very big problem with Firefox is that there is no true separation between tabs. Several times a day it happens that I open a few tabs in the background, only to get Firefox unresponsive due to one of the tabs behaving badly. This is unacceptable. In Google's Chrome tabs are separated to different processes and the browser never becomes unresponsive.

Mozilla should fix the real problems, not some niche geeky problems. If they don't they will continue to loose market share in an alarming rate.

[LinuxID10T]

I just compared the two. Firefox 18 was actually slower than Firefox 17 running Sunspider

[mayankleoboy1]

One thing to note is that Ionmonkey is used only for long running code, like Games and web-applications.
For the usual JS used in web pages, the older "Jagermonkey+Typed Inference" is used.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 18.0 Lets Loose IonMonkey Compiler

Mozilla Firefox 18.0 is now available. The main feature of this open-source web-browser update is the introduction of IonMonkey, a faster JavaScript compiler...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI2OTQ