Is JavaScript Faster Than C?

There's been a lot great work happening in the VM performance space over the last few years. The problems of performance are beginning to be well understood as even dynamic languages begin to challenge the incumbents. This article reviews a project which aims to bring more empirical testing to the language/runtime performance debate. Rather than argue about the theorectical, we let the code speak for itself. You may be suprised by what it says.

Stop!

The author of this article is well aware of its provocative nature. This is just one test and readers should take care when extrapolating these results to dissimilar use cases. The C code provided by the project being reviewed follows an Object Oriented style. It is certainly possible to optimize the C code further, for instance by using a more procedural style with less memory allocation. But then a similar approach should be used by the other versions (languages) presented as well. I whole heartedly encourge you to submit pull requests with these new versions in separate directories based on the style/technique used.

My intention is to challenge readers to question their assumptions regarding language/runtime performance. I also hope to highlight the fact that server side JavaScript has become a viable platform choice when performance is a consideration. That said, this is one test and I can only encourage more work in this area. If you're interested in such things, check out The Computer Language Benchmarks Game. Let's discuss results rather than argue fanatically about predictions.

The Problem

Solving 137846 games of the 15-Hole Peg Soltaire by calculating every possible move using an Object Oriented style. Solutions are provided in C, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python and Ruby (more submissions encouraged!). Most of the code was written by Jonathan Fuerth his presentation on Java/HotSpot performance. I've updated the JavaScript so that it uses prototypical method inheritance. You can find my 'fork' on github.

The Code

    git clone git://github.com/gflarity/peg-performance.git

Pre-requisites

This was all developed and tested under OS X however there shouldn't be any platform dependencies. You'll need a number of things for the test itself. I've put the version I'm using in brackets: gcc (4.2.1), Mono (2.10.1), Java (1.6.0_24), node.js (0.4.2), PHP (5.3.3), Python (2.7.1), Ruby (1.8.7).

Run the tests!

Note this will take a few minutes as some platforms are definitely faster than others.

    cd src/main
    make test

For each of the languages the test is run 10 times. I throw out the best and worst result then compute an average. A chart is created to show the results.

Results

Results can be viewed by opening .reports/report.html.

Here is the graph produced by this test on my MacBook Air:

Analysis

Here's what I find interesting about these results:

0) The JavaScript implementation is even faster if you load the browser version in Chrome 10. It clocks in around 2300ms on my mba.

1) HotSpot Java is F.A.S.T., FAST. I'd really like to see a C++ version for comparison in this test. But given the ecosystem out there and the fact that it's automatically cross platform, I'd have hard time justifying the use of C++ for many things these days... Well, maybe a kickass JavaScript engine ;)

2) I'd also like to see the results of this test if this problem was solved in a non object oriented style. That said, there are distinct advantages to using OOP.

3) Much respect to the Mono project. While I'm sure Microsoft's .NET runtime approaches the HotSpot VM in terms of performance, Mono is hanging in there.

4) JavaScript is a dynamically typed language. We must consider this when comparing its performance vs a statically typed Java. While some might argue that static typing is 'safer', performance is its only virtue in my opinion. (Edit: Static typing also helps IDEs with code complete and other useful features, this is also a virtue :) Typically I trade reduced performance for increased development efficiency every time I choose Perl, Python or Ruby. So despite its quirks, it appears that JavaScript can offer the best of both worlds in terms of performance and development efficiency. Not bad for the language that's in every browser and hence is the most widely deployed language/runtime in the world.