The web is evolving and so should the JavaScript benchmarks that measure its performance. Today, we are releasing Octane, a JavaScript benchmark suite that aims to measure a browser’s performance when running the complex and demanding web applications that users interact with daily.

Most of the existing JavaScript benchmarks run artificial tests that were created on an ad-hoc basis to stress a specific JavaScript feature. Octane breaks with this tradition and extends the former V8 Benchmark Suite with 5 new benchmarks created from full, unaltered [1], well-known web applications and libraries. A high score in the new benchmarks directly translates to better and smoother performance in similar web applications.

Here is an overview of the new tests:

• Box2DWeb runs a JavaScript port of a popular 2D physics engine that is behind many well-known simulations and web games. 
• Mandreel puts a JavaScript port of the 3D Bullet Engine to the test with a twist: The original C++ source code for the engine is translated to JavaScript by Onan Games’ Mandreel compiler, which is also used in countless web-based games. 
• Pdf.js is based on Mozilla’s PDF reader and shows how Javascript applications can replace complex native browser plug-ins. It measures how fast the browser decodes a sample PDF document. 
• GB Emulator is derived from an open source emulator of a famous game console running a 3D demo. 
• CodeLoad measures how quickly a JavaScript engine can bootstrap commonly used JavaScript libraries and start executing code in them. The source for this test is derived from open source libraries (Closure, jQuery). 

Besides an expanded set of benchmarks, Octane also has an interface that makes it easier to read and that adapts automatically to tablet and mobile screens.

You can try out Octane yourself, browse the source code, or read more about each benchmark at the Octane site. Still have some questions? Have a look at the FAQ page.

As of current dev and beta channel releases, V8 uses a new algorithm based on counters to decide which functions to optimize. This greatly increases performance for small JavaScript programs. For example, on the SunSpider benchmark, which focuses on extremely short-running tests, V8's speed improved by about 25%.

When executing JavaScript, V8 at first compiles it to machine code with a very fast compiler that doesn't optimize the code it produces. V8 has a second, optimizing compiler that generates much faster machine code, but takes much more time to do so, so it has to be used selectively. That's why V8 must try to predict which functions will benefit most from optimization, and carefully decide when to optimize them.

In the past, V8 stopped once every millisecond to look at currently running functions, and eventually optimized them. For long-running programs, this worked great, but short-running programs often finished before they could benefit much from the optimizing compiler -- a single millisecond can be a long time to wait before optimizing! In addition, V8 often made different optimization decisions each time a JavaScript program ran, sometimes overlooking small but performance-critical functions.

The new version of V8 makes earlier and more repeatable optimization decisions by analyzing the running program in more detail. It uses counters to keep track of how often JavaScript functions are called and loops are executed in a program, approximating the time spent inside each function. That way V8 is able to quickly gather fine-grained information about performance bottlenecks in a JavaScript program, and to make sure that the optimizing compiler's efforts are spent on those functions that deserve it most.

Today we are releasing version 7 of the V8 Benchmark Suite. This new version adds Oliver Hunt’s 2D Navier-Stokes fluid dynamic simulation, which stresses intense double array computations. These complex double array computations are today common in games, graphic and scientific applications.

The new test shows the recent improvements V8 has made in handling advanced physics computations: the current Chrome 18 (today in beta) delivers a 5% score improvement compared to the current Chrome 17. Chrome 19 (today in canary), where the full set of improvements is being released, delivers a whopping 25% score improvement compared to Chrome 17.

With these additions, the V8 Benchmark Suite is now a more comprehensive collection of eight tests, including OS kernel simulation, crypto and string operations, memory management stress-tests, and as of today, double array computations.

We plan to keep updating the suite by adding more tests. These updates are a reflection of Chrome’s commitment to keep pushing the boundaries of speed, optimizing the engine for today’s more demanding web apps.

Benchmarks are incredibly important for influencing the direction of JavaScript engines. Over the past two years, JavaScript has gotten dramatically faster across all major browsers, particularly in areas that popular benchmarks measure. As it turns out, browser developers are a competitive bunch. However, as JS engines get faster, benchmarks must evolve in order to keep pushing them in the right direction.

We’ve been constantly updating our V8 benchmark suite to force us to get faster in areas that are important to web developers. We’ve fixed bugs and added new tests for regular expressions and memory management. We’re very focused on JavaScript performance, so we scrutinize our benchmark carefully to make sure that it’s as useful a measuring stick as possible.

The two other widely cited JS benchmarks are SunSpider from Apple, and Kraken, a new benchmark from Mozilla.

SunSpider was one of the first suites of tests, first appearing in 2007. It’s done a lot to help improve JS engines, but many of the tests in the suite are less relevant to the web in 2011. Even for the more relevant tests, JavaScript has gotten so fast that many finish in only a few milliseconds. This just isn’t long enough to figure out which engine is faster--a golf cart and a Tesla will finish a 10-foot race in nearly the same time.

To make the benchmark more meaningful, we’ve experimented by making the race longer by running each of the tests in SunSpider 50 times consecutively. While repeating a trivial test many times isn’t a great solution, it does provide an opportunity for some optimization. With this change, the results begin to reflect Chrome’s true performance. It’s more than 30% faster on the SunSpider suite overall and up to 4x faster on some of the individual tests.

Kraken, a more modern benchmark, is in better shape. Unfortunately, the canonical version of the benchmark has not been updated to reflect all the latest changes which address at least one important bug. As a result, the benchmark is less useful and has even (mis)led us to spend time making some irrelevant optimizations in Chrome. To help us focus on the right things, we’re now testing the latest version of Kraken built directly from Mozilla’s source code repository.

We’re posting a modified version of SunSpider and the latest version of Kraken to make it easy to run the benchmarks in your own browser and compare results.

Google released the newest Google Chrome 10 build to the beta channel yesterday, boasting progress in the form of revamped browser settings, password sync features, as well as JavaScript performance.

V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine, now runs intense JavaScript applications faster than in the past. To be more specific, the V8 benchmark suite indicated an improvement over the current stable release of 66%. See the chart below to see how it compares with prior versions of Chrome.

GPU accelerated video is now also a part of the new beta, reducing CPU usage for and improving battery life. The highest recorded drop in CPU usage was 80% when using full screen mode.

Saved passwords can now be synced across numerous computers as well. It was previously only extensions, themes, bookmarks, and preferences that could be synced. Passphrases can be utilized to encrypt passwords for additional security.

With regards to the revamped browser settings, they now open in a tab instead of a window.

A search function has been introduced to allow users easily find the feature they wish to change the settings for (with results updating as you type). Settings pages now have their own URLs as well, giving users the ability to navigate straight to a particular setting.

With all the Chrome OS and Chrome Web Store hoopla today, a post over at the Chromium blog went mostly unnoticed -- and it's definitely noteworthy. Freshly baked in the Chromium snapshot builds and Google Chrome Canary is Crankshaft, an enhancement to Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine that has yielded some impressive gains.

Crankshaft is made up of four components:

• a runtime profiler for identifying code that uses a significant number of CPU cycles
• a base compiler for generating code more quickly
• an optimizing compiler which re-compiles code pinpointed by the profiler
• deoptimization mechanism that allows Crankshaft to recover from overly-optimistic code optimizations

Crankshaft offers improvements in both startup time and maximum performance, with Google noting gains of up to 12% on JavaScript-heavy pages. On Google's own V8 benchmark, Crankshaft helps Chrome post scores which are almost 50% higher than previous versions with V8 alone.

...And for those of you wondering when Chrome was going to hit version ten, you've got your answer. It's already happened to the Canary build -- so hit your wrench menu > About Google Chrome and restart to update yourself to Chrome X! There's not much new that you'll notice right off the bat, with the exception of a selectable Instant option and experimental geolocation features in about:flags.

Google has released an update to Chrome's developer channel build, and the changelog is a lengthy one. Among the plethora of bugfixes and UI tweaks are some notable changes like the arrival of theme syncing, the departure of Windows 7's taskbar thumbnails, and several minor UI tweaks.

As predicted yesterday, the expanded sync options which landed in Chromium have made their way into the dev channel build. Theme sync wasn't even present in Chromium's preference menu as of yesterday afternoon, yet it snuck in to Chrome today.

That was also the case with support for Aero Peek, which was removed on April 5th. Those who want them back can simply add a command line switch (see the previous post), and thumbnails will likely reappear in Chrome once a satisfactory implementation can be engineered.

You may also have noticed that the bookmark star has been moved to the right-hand side of the Omnibox. Other minor tweaks to Chrome's interface have also been made, like the browser actions area resize grabber. Just about every other aspect of Chrome has received some updating, from the V8 JavaScript engine, to autofill, to its geolocation feature (which is now enabled by default).

Interested users can either update their current dev channel build via the wrench menu -> about Chrome and new users can download the build from Google's site.