V8

At least some at Google want to embrace a Mozilla-backed project to speed up Web apps written with JavaScript -- even though it competes directly with Google's own Native Client and Dart programming technology.

Mozilla has been working for months on a technology called ASM.js, which it hopes will boost JavaScript performance, especially in combination with a related Mozilla-spawned technology called Emscripten. JavaScript powers Web apps such as Google Docs, and ASM.js is a special "extremely restricted" subset of the programming language that's designed to make it easier for developers to bring existing software … Read more

Some things were never meant to go together, but that hasn't stopped some insane mechanics from fitting a honking V8 engine to a shopping cart to create the Shopper Chopper hot rod.

Admittedly, this isn't just a stock shopping cart stolen from the grocery store parking lot. It's custom built to accommodate a height of more than 9 feet and a length of more than 12 feet. You could fit a lot of cereal boxes and Doritos into this monster, but it's already fitted with seating capacity for six people.… Read more

Although speed is a major factor in browser choice, many people don't want to know why their favorite browser is fast -- they just care that it is. But the standards and tests used to determine how we measure a browser's speed can be varied, so Google has set out to further define the playing field.

This doesn't appear to be a case of the tech giant stomping all over open standards, though. Octane v1 is a revamp of Google's V8 benchmark and adds five tests to the eight current ones, the company said today in … Read more

Google today released a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android, a momentous step that marries two of Google's most important programming projects.

The new browser, unlike the stock Android browser, is available in the Android Market so that people don't have to wait for handset makers to offer it through an operating system upgrade. But its reliance on newer hardware acceleration interfaces means it only works on Ice Cream Sandwich, which despite emerging last year on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone remains a rarity in the real world.

Chrome for Android (review) includes the desktop version'… Read more

Google's at it again with a new programming language, this one called Dart.

In 2009, Google launched Go, a language designed for writing server software and handling other chores often handled today by C or C++. Dart, though, is "a new programming language for structured Web programming," according to the schedule for the Goto conference where Googlers plan to describe it next month.

There are two Dart presenters. First is Gilad Bracha, who created the Newspeak programming language that just reached version 3. He also was co-author of the Java Language Specification and worked at SAP Labs, … Read more

Google released Chrome 10 today, endowing its browser with faster JavaScript, password synchronization, a revamped preferences system--but no new Chrome logo. Chrome is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Google announced Chrome 10's stable release on its blog but refrained from mentioning its product number. That's in line with the company's effort to focus on features rather than version numbers, which it calls mere milestones. Google tries to get new versions into users' hands as rapidly as possible and currently passes a new milestone about once every six weeks.

JavaScript is the programming language used to write … Read more

Google released two new versions of Chrome yesterday, version 10 for beta users and version 11 for developers willing to put up with more instability.

With Google's six-week update schedule, the new releases are milestones that Chrome users pass--often not necessarily noticing given the software's silent auto-update mechanism. But there are significant new features coming with the new beta.

Top on Google's list is faster JavaScript with the "Crankshaft" version of the new V8 JavaScript engine. JavaScript runs increasingly sophisticated Web-based applications such as Google Docs, and this highly competitive aspect of browser performance has … Read more

Google's newest test versions of Chrome are equipped with a faster JavaScript engine, an increasingly important browser component for running Web-based programs.

The result is faster-loading pages, more powerful Web applications, and another round in the browser performance competition with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Opera.

Chrome's browser engine, called V8, is being upgraded to version 3, called Crankshaft. It uses a technique called adaptive compilation that translates JavaScript into native instructions for a processor and then concentrates more energy on improving the parts of the code used most often, Google said. … Read more

At the end of our week with the 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT8, we had a short list of cabin-tech quibbles that could stand improvement (starting with putting a voice-control button on the steering wheel), but we didn't want to get greedy and ask for "more power." Fortunately, Dodge's engineers can think for themselves and will be unveiling a new, more powerful variant of the SRT8 at the 2010 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, the 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392.

The 392 designation at the end of the model name refers to the engine's displacement, its … Read more