Chrome 91 has up to 23% faster performance as a result of its new JavaScript compiler

With the release of Chrome 91, the development team for Google’s browser has taken to the Chromium Blog to discuss the enhancements to its performance. As with the last handful of updates, specifically Chrome 87’s speed, and battery improvements, 91 has a few tricks up its sleeve to make everything a bit faster.

By implementing a new JavaScript compiler called Sparkplug and short builtin calls, it’s been able to save over 17 years of users’ CPU time each day! Sparkplug basically fills the gap between needing to start executing code quickly and optimizing it for maximum performance. The aforementioned short builtin calls optimize where in memory the browser puts generated code to avoid indirect jumps when calling functions. Google is providing a deep dive look into the technical aspects of this all over on the V8 blog post. What you need to take away from this is that over time we ought to have less and less bloat, lagging, and freezing with the browser, especially on Windows where it’s been known in the past to be a RAM hog.

Other updates rolling out with Chrome 91 include the long-awaited Tab Group freezing (which works with Tab Group collapsing), the ability to mark PWAs for launch on startup, desktop websites automatically loading on Android tablets, and loads of technical and visual improvements which you can read about over on the Chrome Releases blog.

One particular visual improvement that I’m excited about is that of form controls. While already available on desktop for quite a while now, these changes are now appearing on Chrome for Android to improve consistency across devices. I’m continually astounded at how the developers find new ways to drastically increase the performance of the browser for users. optimizing JavaScript processes is a great way to tackle the issue, but it’s still an incredible feat nonetheless.