The Google Chrome V8 JavaScript Benchmark Adds Physics Simulation Tests

Google is expanding the V8 Benchmarking Suite with a new test based on physics simulation, specifically fluid dynamic simulation. It says that this type of computation is used frequently in games, graphic applications and scientific ones.

There are now a total of eight main tests in the V8 suite and Google says it will add more as needed.

"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," Stefano Cazzulani, product manager at Google, wrote.

The release of the new version of the V8 suite was timed to coincide with the release of several improvements in the way the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine handles just this type of computational tasks.

A Chrome team has been working on this lately and some improvements are already visible in Chrome 18, now in beta, which is 5 percent faster in this test than the current Chrome 17 stable.

But the big improvements are in the very latest Chrome 19 Canary, soon to land in the dev channel, which scores 25 percent better than Chrome 17.

The end result is that Chrome should be able to handle intensive JavaScript apps, games and those doing heavy graphics work, better than before.

What it also means is that all the other browsers will score lower than Chrome, at least for now, in the V8 Benchmarking Suite. Given that Google created the suite to test Chrome internally, it's not much of a surprise that Chrome generally scores better in it compared to other browsers than it does in other benchmarks.

"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," Cazzulani also added. "We plan to keep updating the suite by adding more tests."