Google's Native Client [LWN.net]

Google's Native Client

Posted Jun 4, 2009 12:41 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Google's Native Client by nikanth
Parent article: Google's Native Client

Those restrictions really don't slow the code down much. They slow down its *theoretical* max speed: a compiler written by an ultraintelligent being could make use of overlapping instructions and that sort of thing.

But code generated by compilers written by human beings never does that. Only attacks do. (And it is very rare to rely on self-modifying code or data execution, either: SELinux and other systems have blocked it for ages, and programs relying on it have long been considered buggy.)

(Log in to post comments)

Actually slowdown is noticeable

Posted Jun 4, 2009 19:34 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

You are losing 5-10% of speed with NaCl. But the biggest win is not even speed. It's usage of memory resources. NaCl sandbox is half-meg of memory. Java is few megabytes for "Hello, World". Not even close to being equal.