A Comparative Evaluation of JavaScript Execution Behavior

2011 9th IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA)

2011

Self Cite

JavaScript has gone from being a mechanism for providing dynamic web pages to an important component of many web applications. Currently one of the most popular type of web applications is so-called social networks, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. However, the workload and execution behavior of JavaScript in this context have not been fully explored or understood.In this paper we present a methodology for characterizing the JavaScript execution behavior in interactive web applications using deterministic execution of use cases. Then, we apply this methodology to evaluate a set of social network applications and compare their behavior to a set of established JavaScript benchmarks. Our results confirm previous studies that the execution behavior of social networks differ from established benchmarks. In addition, we identify one novel difference not published before, i.e., the use of anonymous functions in web applications.978-1-4577-0476-5/11/$26.00

Section: Discussion and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

A methodology for evaluating JavaScript execution behavior in interactive web applications

2011 9th IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA)

2011

Self Cite

“…This can be understood from the characteristics of JavaScript execution shown by Martisen at al. [4]; JavaScript functions are small in terms of number of executed bytecode instructions and quickly returns. Therefore the depth of the speculated functions is going to vary.…”

Section: B Fixed Checkpoint Depth Limitmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Google's JavaScript engine V8's decrease in execution time has been measured on a set of benchmarks, which Ratanaworabhan et al [3] show are unrepresentative for real-world web applications. Martinsen et al [4] show the dramatic effect of this as JIT speeds up the execution of benchmarks, but often slows down the execution time in popular web applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Memory in Software-Based Thread-Level Speculation for JavaScript Virtual Machine Execution of Web Applications

2014 IEEE Intl Conf on High Performance Computing and Communications, 2014 IEEE 6th Intl Symp on Cyberspace Safety and Security

Isberg

et al. 2014

Self Cite

Abstract-Thread-Level Speculation has been used to take advantage of multicore processors in virtual execution environments for the sequential JavaScript scripting language. While the results are promising the memory overhead has so far been high. In this paper, we make the following contributions: (i) We propose to reduce memory usage by limiting the checkpoint depth, (ii) we present an in-depth study of the effects of limiting the checkpoint depth in Thread-Level Speculation, and (iii) we propose an adaptive heuristic to dynamically adjust the number of checkpoints. We evaluate our techniques using 15 web applications on an 8-core computer. The results show that we reduce the memory overhead for Thread-Level Speculation by over 90% as compared to storing all checkpoints. At the same time, the performance is often better than when we store all checkpoints and at worst 4% slower.

“…However we measured the JavaScript workload for a large number of popular Web Applications, with in-depth measurements for so-called social networks [4], and we found that certain JavaScript features play an important role in real-life Web Applications [4], [7].…”

Section: A Unrepresentative Benchmarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the increased popularity of Web Applications and a higher demand for performance, several optimization techniques have been suggested along with a set of benchmarks. Several studies have shown that these benchmarks are unrepresentative [4], [5], [6], and that current optimization techniques often degrades the performance of Web Applications [7]. Therefore alternative optimization techniques and multicore architectures should play a crucial part.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thread-level speculation as an optimization technique in Web Applications — Initial results

2011 6th IEEE International Symposium on Industrial and Embedded Systems

2011

Self Cite

Web Applications have become increasingly popular as they allow developers to use an uniform platform for user interactions. The dynamic programming language JavaScript used in most Web Applications has performance penalties, that have been addressed by traditional optimization techniques. We have found that while the performance gain of such techniques are positive for a set of established benchmarks, it often fails to improve the performance of real-life Web Applications.We suggest Thread-Level Speculation (TLS) at the JavaScript function level to automatically extract parallelism to gain performance. There have been multiple TLS proposals in both hardware and software, but little work has been done within JavaScript. Currently we are implementing our TLS ideas in a state-of-the-art JavaScript engine targeted for embedded mobile devices.