NewsAsm.js Offers Near Native Performance, Says Mozilla

Asm.js Offers Near Native Performance, Says Mozilla

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Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, says that recent enhancements to asm.js allow JavaScript to perform nearly as fast as native code. In the past, JavaScript was about twice as slow as native code, but now asm.js is performing about 1.5 times as slow on benchmarks. However, in order to see the performance improvements, users must be using the Firefox browser.

“Even the current performance numbers – 1.5x slower than native, or better – are not the limit of what can be achieved, as there are still big improvements either under way or in planning, both in emscripten and in JavaScript engines,” said Mozilla’s Alon Zakai.

While Mozilla has focused on asm.js, other companies have been investigating competing technologies for speeding JavaScript. For example, Google has been working on NaCl and Dart, and Microsoft has been championing TypeScript.

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