Google Launches New Open Source Sputnik For Javascript

A key feature of Google's Chrome browser is its V8 JavaScript engine. But is it actually faster than other JavaScript engines? How do you measure that and is V8 compliant with all of the JavaScript specifications?

For the most part, developers have used the standard SunSpider test that helps to measure JavaScript performance. Now Google is launching a new open source JavaScript measurement tool called Sputnik. According to Google, Sputnik has more than 5000 tests to fully qualify JavaScript.

"The goal is not that all implementations should pass all tests," Christian Plesner Hansen, Google Software engineer wrote in blog post."V8 set out with that intention and we learned the hard way that sometimes you have to be incompatible with the spec to be compatible with the web. Rather, we want Sputnik to be a tool for identifying differences between implementations."

The Sputnik test suite requires python in order to run - and is already available as a free download. Whether or not Sputnik will become a new standard by which browser vendors will measure themselves is a question yet to be answered.

JavaScript is a quirky thing and performance has lately been something that vendors have been competing on.  Early on in Chrome's life, Google's claims of JavaScript superiority were challenged by Mozilla. Mozilla is after all, home to the creator of JavaScript -- Brendan Eich.

Actually running Sputnik is not as easy as running the current SunSpider suite. SunSpider is available online so any user can test their performance with a click. Sputnik right now requires a python install and getting it up and running will require a bit more work.

That said, Google isn't  looking at speed/performance they are looking at compliance with the ECMA-262 standard for JavaScript. That's interesting in that it will show where different JavaScript implementations are different - as opposed to just speed. While the current JavaScript hype is all about speed, perhaps with Sputnik in orbit, the next round of hype will be about compliance and standards.

*UPDATED* 06/30 - corrected references to Sputnik as a peformance tool - as per Google comment - "The sputnik tests are not a performance measurement tool -- they don't measure speed, only compliance with the JavaScript standard."