14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft announced at BUILD 2015 that its new browser for Windows 10 would be called Edge, thus dropping the Spartan moniker that appealed to so many users.
While there’s no doubt that the name of the browser is also quite important, nobody can deny that what’s really critical is the actual performance of the app and the feature pack that it comes with, so Microsoft attempted to prove that it excels in this category as well.
During the second day of BUILD, Microsoft revealed the results of two different benchmarks to prove that Edge is indeed faster than competitors, scoring better in both of them despite still being in development.
JetStream and Octane 2.0
Basically, Microsoft used JetStream and Octane 2.0 benchmarks to brag about the performance of its browser, showing that Edge is faster than Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. Interestingly, both JetStream and Octane were designed by Microsoft rivals, namely Apple and Google, respectively, so the software giant might have a point when trying to prove that Edge really is a fast app.
Octane 2.0 is a benchmark that measures the performance of the JavaScript engine and includes a series of tests that can be performed not only on PCs but also on smartphones and tablets. Workloads and execution profiles of real web applications are measured by Octane, with its developers saying that its goal “is to be a proxy for JavaScript applications.”
JetStream, on the other hand, includes a variety of benchmarks, such as SunSpider 1.0.2 and Octane 2 JavaScript and covers both classical performance improvements and real-world examples.
As you can see, Microsoft Edge topped competition in both of them and Microsoft says that improvements that will be implemented in the coming months, as development of the new browser advances, will make it even faster.
Microsoft Edge, codenamed Spartan, will be available on all Windows 10 devices, including PCs, smartphones, and tablets, and it will replace Internet Explorer on all of these.
