Chrome is up to 23% faster in M91 and saves over 17 years of CPU time daily

An important component of delivering a fast browser is fast JavaScript execution. In Chrome, that job is done by the V8 engine which executes over 78 years worth of JavaScript code on a daily basis. In M91 Chrome is now up to 23% faster with the launch of a new Sparkplug compiler and short builtin calls, saving over 17 years of our users' CPU time each day! Sparkplug is a new JavaScript compiler that fills the gap between needing to start executing quickly and optimizing the code for maximum performance. Short builtin calls optimize where in memory we put generated code to avoid indirect jumps when calling functions.

Sparkplug

The V8 engine has multiple compilers which can make different tradeoffs throughout the various phases of executing JavaScript. Three years ago, we launched a new two-tier compiler system consisting of Ignition and Turbofan. Ignition is a bytecode interpreter whose job is to start executing the JavaScript with as little delay as possible. Turbofan is the optimizing compiler that generates high-performance machine code based on information gathered during JavaScript execution; as a result, it starts up more slowly than Ignition’s bytecode compiler. Sparkplug strikes a balance between Ignition and Turbofan in that it does generate native machine code but does not depend on information gathered while executing the JavaScript code. This lets it start executing quickly while still generating relatively fast code. For a complete technical deep dive into what it took to make this new engine, please see our V8 blog post.