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SquirrelFish is To WebKit as Steroids are to Baseball

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 6:00PM EST
BGR

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Ok, maybe that’s not the best analogy since SquirrelFish isn’t illegal. With performance figures like this however, competing mobile browsers may wish it was. WebKit, the driving force behind “real web in your pocket” browsers such as the S60 Browser and Apple’s mobile Safari, has just received a new juiced-up JavaScript interpreter that bumps efficiency up considerably. Codenamed SquirrelFish, WebKit’s new interpreter is a whopping 60% faster than its predecessor as displayed by the graph above showing the results of SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tests. From the announcement:

SquirrelFish is a register-based, direct-threaded, high-level bytecode engine, with a sliding register window calling convention. It lazily generates bytecodes from a syntax tree, using a simple one-pass compiler with built-in copy propagation.

Right then. All you really need to know is that once future builds of WebKit are incorporated into your mobile browser of choice, JavaScript performance is going to be a heck of a lot faster. SquirrelFish is also just the first step in a series of enhancements. Juice it up fellas!

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Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.