Counting milliseconds

Jun 26, 2010 12:24 GMT  ·  By

Performance-wise, the release of Platform Preview 3 Build 1.9.7.8.74.6000 has brought Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) closer than ever to the latest versions of Chrome, Opera, Safari and Firefox. It’s clear that with the next generation of Internet Explorer, Microsoft has a real shot at grabbing the world’s fastest browser spot, in the detriment of rival browsers developed by Google, Mozilla, Opera or Apple. But such glory will undoubtedly be short lived, by any standards, as neither Internet Explorer 9, nor any other browser will be capable of achieving a speed advantage sufficiently comfortable to allow it to maintain the lead for a longer period of time.

Then again, this aspect matters little to all interested parties, from browser vendors, to users, web and add-on developers, etc. Google, Mozilla, Opera, Safari and even Microsoft have used various opportunities to applaud the performance of their respective browsers over that of rivals, enjoying different levels of credibility. It is after all an ongoing race, much like the overall evolution of browsers.

The Redmond company has the toughest job of all rivals in bringing to the public conclusions of its own measuring contests in which IE comes on top of its competitors. The software giant’s comparison of browser speed done for IE8, using real-world scenarios, put IE9’s predecessor on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.5 in early 2009. But I remember a range of user feedback that expressed skepticism of Microsoft’s findings.

With IE9, Microsoft has adopted an entirely new strategy. First off, the company actually seems keen on delivering a final IE9 which will outperform rivals in popular benchmarks, such as the Webkit SunSpider. And secondly, the software giant has not only made consistent progress from one developer preview of IE9 to another, but also touted IE’s new performance metrics.

“Today, people expect less from a website than they do from native applications in terms of power, richness, responsiveness, and interactivity. With the third platform preview, we continue to deliver on the promise of a fully hardware accelerated browser where all of the support for text, graphics, and media uses the underlying hardware through Windows, making the full power of the PC available for the Web. Using the power of the whole PC shatters the previous constraints that limited websites,” revealed Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer.

IE9 Platform Preview 3 is now faster than the Firefox 4.0 early builds

According to the latest results published by Microsoft, IE9 Platform Preview 3 is faster than Firefox 3.5 Alpha 6, an early build of Firefox 4.0, in the Webkit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. IE9 Preview 3 has a Sunspider result average of just 347 milliseconds. In this regard, IE9 Build 1.9.7.8.74.6000 beats IE9 Platform Preview 2 with 347 ms, Firefox 3.7 Pre-Release Alpha 6 with 548 ms, IE9 Platform Preview #1 590 ms, Firefox 3.6.3 736 ms, IE9 PDC 2009 Demo 832 ms, and IE8 3746 ms. Only a few browsers scored better than IE9 Platform Preview 3, namely Safari 5.0 325 ms, Opera 10.53 283 ms, Chrome 5.0.375.70 280 ms, Chrome 6 Nightly 6.0.427.0 280 ms and Opera 10.6 Beta 243 ms.

“WebKit SunSpider is one test to measure a browser’s JavaScript execution performance. Here’s how the latest Internet Explorer Platform Preview compares to other browsers. The WebKit SunSpider test regularly changes which impacts a browsers score. SunSpider was updated to version 0.9.1 in April 2010, so all browsers were tested with version 0.9.1 in these charts. These results were from a Dell Optiplex with a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 4GB RAM, Intel Integrated Video, running Windows 7,” Microsoft revealed.

IE9 comes with a new JS engine, codenamed Chakra, and is already positioned as one of the contenders for the ‘fastest browser in the world’ title. Of course, Microsoft still has more work ahead to boost JS performance. “JavaScript is one component of browser performance, and Webkit Sunspider is one measure of script performance. The latest platform preview shows how IE9’s JavaScript engine continues to get faster,” Hachamovitch said.

Why benchmarks such as Webkit SunSpider matter?

Well, it’s rather simple. Users will always want tangible proof of browser performance. The Webkit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark offers the kind of palpable results that reflect browser speed, even if the test itself is limited to just JS, in the context in which the differences between IE, Opera, Chrome, Mozilla and Safari are no longer quantifiable by any other systems.

“Looking at the differences between the script engines’ performance, you see the performance gaps between the fastest script engines are now less than 50 milliseconds – and that’s executing several million script instructions during the benchmark test. This difference is already under any human perception threshold, and we’re not done yet,” Hachamovitch said.

The fact that milliseconds are counted to make the difference in terms of speed between browsers is a clear indication that the race for the ‘fastest browser in the world’ is borderline absurd. Ahead of anything else, coming on top of performance benchmarks offers inherent bragging rights, which some browser makers leverage more than others. Still, for Microsoft, performance is yet another aspect of its browser where the company can show the world a strong focus on building and delivering the best Internet Explorer possible. And truth be told, IE9 needs to be better than rivals, if the company plans to regain users it lost to Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 3 Build 1.9.7.8.74.6000 is available for download here.

Firefox 3.7 Alpha 5 for Windows is available for download here.

Google Chrome 6.0.447.0 is available for download
here.

Opera 10.60 Build 3442 Beta  is available for download
here.

Follow me on Twitter @MariusOiaga.

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