New JavaScript interpreter for WebKit
Posted: on June 8, 2008 at 12:16 p.m.. Last Update: 8th June 2008 at 12:16 p.m..
Announced on the blog of WebKit, the engine of Safari, the introduction of a new JavaScript interpreter, whose code name is SquirrelFish. 
The new interpreter SquirrelFish is faster (1.6 times faster) of the previous JavaScript interpreter for WebKit, as shown in a chart on the blog.
The previous JavaScript interpreter used by WebKit to do the building code, a code from a syntax tree (syntax tree). Then the interpreter visiting nodes running the operations. This model of execution cost has a run time, such as a syntax tree describes the grammatical structure of the code, not the things you need to do to run it. It may therefore be that the interpreter repeated visits during the execution of nodes that are not useful to execution. For example, the following snippet of code: "(x + +;) interpreter first visit the node corresponding to '(...)", during which there will be no operation performed, and after visiting the node corresponding to "x + +" when which will increase the value of the variable x.
Squirrelfish, being a bytecode engine, eliminates almost all of these costs at run time. For example, the execution of the bytecode is much faster than visiting a node of the tree parser.
