IE9 preview brings GPGPU acceleration
The new JavaScript engine - along with GPGPU acceleration - helps IE9 trounce IE8 in benchmark tests.
As reported over on ExtremeTech, Internet Explorer 9 - which is currently not much more than a tweaked rendering engine on top of Internet Explorer 8 - looks to bring IE out of the doldrums in benchmarks and put it back at the top of the tree once more, thanks to the wonders of general purpose GPU computing.
The GPGPU engine allows those with compatible graphics cards - anything recent from Nvidia or ATI should suffice - to offload graphics rendering operations on to the graphics card, freeing up the CPU to deal with back-end stuff such as JavaScript - an area in which Internet Explorer has always been laggardly.
Speaking of which, the Internet Explorer team is busily working on JavaScript performance, too: by taking advantage of dual- and quad-core processors by compiling the code on one core and running it on another, IE9 promises a significant performance boost. Demonstrating the difference the two technologies can make once combined, principle program manager Jason Weber demonstrated a JavaScript 3D engine that caused IE8 to cry after just a dozen instances - but IE9 carried on at full speed with 256 separate icons.
If the idea of offloading some tasks to the GPU sounds familiar, then you're probably thinking about work carried out to introduce the same technology into the popular Firefox browser by the Mozilla Foundation. While Microsoft was the first to announce GPGPU acceleration in its browser back in November, Firefox beat IE to the punch in having the first available test version: now it just remains to see which of the companies can get a fully supported version out of the door first.
Sadly for those plugging away on Windows XP, Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 9 - with all its multi-core and GPGPU goodness - will be limited to Vista, Windows 7, and the company's server products.
If you're curious to give it a go - and you're running Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 or newer - then you can download the platform preview directly from the Test Drive website.
Do you believe that making everyday programs like the web browser take advantage of the ultra-powerful graphics cards and multi-core processors most of us have sat in our machines is the way forward, or is there more Microsoft could be doing in code efficiency before worrying about taking over more hardware? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replywhats the point in having an image if you cant read it?
surely im not the only one who struggles to read the text in it?
thankyou!
actually... not to ditch opera, but Chrome has been getting a 100/100 score in Acid3 for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time now...
in any case, i just compared the performance of ie9/chrome/ie8/firefox and ie9 renders at incredible speeds where the rest of the browsers are stuck at 2-3 fps... ie9 meanwhile rendering at 64 fps. i'm impressed!!
Other than that: Thanks, I'll stay with FF. But it's good to see MS learn and improve.
Boasting that "IE9 is quicker than IE8" is much like bragging that your 1.2l 1982 Lada Riva would thrash round the Nürburgring quicker than an 80 year old man, in a zimmer frame, recovering from a triple heart bypass and a particularly nasty bout of pneumonia. Doubtless true, but not much of a selling point.
It's still cool though, and I imagine it will really spur the development of graphics-intensive online games etc.
/*not holding breath*/
well done MS, setting a very good example of how browsers should move towards, hardware-utilisation-wise.
I, for one, am happy that they're pushing hard. IE6 < IE7 < IE8, and hopefully, < IE9
Javascript rendering is really not everything. Bigger than that is HTML5/CSS3 capabilities.
Lots of Javascript becomes obsolete with HTML5/CSS3. I'm no expert on the subject (i just toyed with basic CSS3), but there's a lot to be said about native HTML/CSS animations. Complete menus without touching Javascript, complex animation, 3D transformation.
IMHO, all the guys going on about sheer Javascript power are wang-waving.
Safari is CSS3 king ATM. If IE9 can compete with that, or even offer up to FF levels of support, the web should become a better place quickly.
Less Flash, Less Javascript.... that's just what the internet needs. And MS seems to be moving in that direction as well...
All-in-One gestures is heavy on CPU/MEM usage, use Firegestures.
I agree
;)
The day when we can all use css3 and html5 is far away and it won't replace javascript. I'd rather would like to see M*soft to fully support standards at first then they can improve performance. it's real pain in the a*** to work as a web developer, to tweak code just for IE, but since most of the users are using IE there's no other option. I'd be happy if MS simply brings IE to the same level of standards support as other browsers
This a thousand times over.
I find myself responding with apathy to every item of news relating to browser performance until they start tightening up how browsers render pages, particularly IE.
I recommed taking a look into Wikipedia first before writing your next news flash.
I agree with you on the compatibility level of IE. It's pretty bad.
I have, however, always figured out quick and easy alternatives to do things and make them look right in all browsers, and have not needed to use a browser hack in > 2 years.
As for CSS3 (more that than HTML5).
Some key features are already being used on surprisingly big sites.
Twitter uses the rounded corners, for example.
I think CSS3 is well usable currently. Not for mission-critical things, but for decorative things.
Rounded Corners, Box Shadows, Text Shadows, RGBA colours, Multiple Backgrounds... those are big things.
The moment the mass of browsers supports them, I'll use them.
Firefox supports most of those.
Safari supports most of those, if not all
IE - well, with 9 it looks to support most of those
Opera supports most of those (10.50)
Chrome supports most of those.
I Really don't see why I shouldn't use it, one IE9 ships. IE8 acceptance rate has gone up, thanks to MS's Windows Vista/7 method of rolling out updates (little alert, and all). I expect IE9 to ship standard with Win 7 SP1, and to be rolled out normally.
In Europe there's the whole Browser choice screen, which will always lead to the user downloading the latest versions.
Firefox updates itself pretty much, and Opera also alerts.
Not sure about chrome, but I'd be surprised if it didn't...
all this shows a bright new day ahead, and a world where we can start using CSS3 for aesthetics, and gracefully degrade for the rest of the planet.
It may still be a good bit of time till we can use 3D transformation and those things in mainstream web dev, but until then, we can start using basics.
And basics are already a long way into replacing the has-been.
Rounded corners replace image-links to an extent
RGBA colours make simple colour schemes super easy
Box shadows replace Gradient images, if used correctly.
CSS3 tranformation WILL have a large impact on the use of Javascript on the web. And if it doesn't then half the world's web developers should possibly reconsider their careers.
Think Widgets/Gadgets.
IE8 had something approaching that with their "web slices" thing. Which I don't think anyone ever used.
Yes we use some of css3 features but not on the main areas of the page, more on promotions and micro sites as we need to keep key/user areas consistent across all browsers because still 20+% of page hits are done using bloody IE6 and in whole it's 70+% IE users so only less than 30% of users actually can enjoy layouts and designs how they meant to be. and i'm talking about huge nr of page hits not few thousands or hundreds of thousands, talking about millions of page hits.
So yeah i'd like to use all the glory (me personally i'm on mac and using both safari and chrome) of new features but since my work is web development and we develop for our customers we need to develop mostly for f***g IE. :)