Need hardware to make a single javascript web browser process run faster

Matthew_184 · Nov 20, 2016

Which hardware component(s) in a computer will make a single javascript process (single tab) in a web browser (Chrome for example) run faster? I've written a script which runs in a single web browser process to handle a huge amount of data (I'm doing some scientific research), but it takes forever for it to run. I realize javascript is not the best language to use for this type of thing, but I've spent a couple months writing the script, so I'd prefer to just buy a powerful computer to make it work. I want to know what pieces of hardware I should be shopping for that are the pieces that have the most impact on running a single tab's process in a web browser for javascript code.

Thanks!

kanewolf · Nov 20, 2016

Have you investigated a javascript compiler -- https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/ ?

Your storage system could be the limiting factor. It is the slowest part of a computer (assuming your data is local to the computer). If not, then the network is the slowest part. CPU clock speed, CPU cache and RAM are usually the next contributing factors. What hardware are you running on now?

You may have written the script inefficiently. Have you run a javascript profiler -- https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/rendering-tools/ ? A profiler will identify where in the code time is being used and how many times a line of code is being executed. For example if you are doing I/O a byte at a time rather than a 1K byte your code will be much less efficient.

Sometimes a hardware upgrade is the right answer, sometimes fixing inefficient code is the only answer.

Matthew_184 · Nov 20, 2016

Thanks for the good info. Here are some follow-ups...

kanewolf :

Have you investigated a javascript compiler -- https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/ ?

I've looked into a compiler, but my code is partially dynamically built using PHP, so it may not be a solution for me; I'm investigating that. Thanks for the link for the javascript profiler info below too; I'll see if that identifies anything that can be improved.

Your storage system could be the limiting factor. It is the slowest part of a computer (assuming your data is local to the computer). If not, then the network is the slowest part. CPU clock speed, CPU cache and RAM are usually the next contributing factors. What hardware are you running on now?

Once my research data is loaded into the script, it's not reading or writing to the disk; would the storage system have anything to do with just the script that's running, or is it only when I'm reading/writing to disk?

My script is run locally on my computer which is running XAMPP, so my computer is the server; when you say "network" you mean if I were running it off a different server, right? So I think for me that's not part of the issue.

For CPU cache, I see something like this in specs: L3 Cache Per CPU - 8 MB. Is it the size (8 MB) that's important, or the L3 part?

You may have written the script inefficiently. Have you run a javascript profiler -- https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/rendering-tools/ ? A profiler will identify where in the code time is being used and how many times a line of code is being executed. For example if you are doing I/O a byte at a time rather than a 1K byte your code will be much less efficient.

Sometimes a hardware upgrade is the right answer, sometimes fixing inefficient code is the only answer.

kanewolf · Nov 20, 2016

You need the profiler data to move forward. If you have a LOT of data, then RAM may be limiting. You could be "swapping" at the O/S level. What percentage of your runtime is data loading? Have you monitored CPU usage? Is one core always maxed out?

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Need hardware to make a single javascript web browser process run faster

Matthew_184

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kanewolf

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Matthew_184

Commendable

kanewolf

Titan

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