The Sunspider JavaScript Benchmark is a popular test of Web Browser performance.
As great as the newest browsers are I though it would be interesting to take a random test and port it to C++ for the sake of comparison.
I decided the rather short fannkuch test was a good candidate. The results:
Not surprisingly the C++ version is 18x faster than Firefox and 8x faster than Chrome. For the curious, the ported C++ code is after the jump.
I should mention one thing changed from the stock Sunspider site (e.g., the link above), is the number of iterations was upped from 8 to 10. At 8 iterations the C++ version was sub-millisecond, meaning I’d have had to roll a custom assembly timer to get a benchmark value. That said, when we lower the iterations down to 9, the stack heavy algorithm starts to benefit the browsers more, with Chrome coming in only 3 times slower and Firefox 11.
Lower the iteration count to the “stock” 8 and Firefox actually catches up to Chrome, with both browsers reporting ~21ms. Interesting.