It’s a C++ engine which can be embedded in any other C++ application freely. It parses the Javascript (ECMA-262 standard), collects the memory garbage (small chunks of memory which are a result of closed processes) and handles memory allocation. It should speed up script execution a big time.

Google claims that Chrome, thanks to V8 is 10 times faster than Firefox 3.0 . As Darren Hobbs states on his blog, you can optimize a code for a benchmark, so maybe Google’s benchmarks are not as accurate as they state. Anyway, a quick test on a Javascript Benchmarking tool gave the following results:

• Firefox 3.0 — 27535.2ms +/- 7.0%
• Chrome — 5127.6ms +/- 3.7% (WOW!)
• Safari (win) — 9317.6ms +/- 9.4%
• IE 7.0 — 81825.4ms +/- 3.0%

That means that it’s not 10 times faster, but only 5. Not that it’s not enough!
By the way, see the IE result? Impressive, I have to admit, it’s the slowest browser when talking about Javascript.

I’m not a C developer, I know only basic stuff, but when I saw the V8 source code I was amazed! The assembly code is generated dynamically. I always knew this is possible, I even heard that it’s an extremely effective way to create high performance applications, I just never used it. For me it’s quite hard to understand though. But as for the applications, it’s a very effective way.

So, the verdict on V8: the test talks for itself, the Chrome engine thanks to V8 and WebKit is extremely fast Javascript executor, the code behind V8 is designed to be very fast, it follows the current standards.

If you develop some application which could use the V8 engine, I say try it. You can only win.