Introducing JITB — a Flash Player Built On the JVM 126
MBCook writes "Joa Ebert has started working on a new program called JITB. Announced in a talk at FITC San Fran, it's a Flash player written to use the Java JVM to run ActionScript, and in a simple graphics test case (making 1 million calls to flash.geom.Point) was 30x faster than Adobe's Flash player. There is an impressive demo video on YouTube showing the point test."
Pointless (no pun intended) (Score:2, Insightful)
So an implementation of a language that only implements 1% of the functionality is less bloated and faster than the full implementation when running one very specific test? No fucking shit. I'm one of the first to bash Flash at any opportunity, but I'll wait and see how well this performs once it actually has some functionality before I start laughing at Adobe.
Re:Adobe has one (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm struggling to come up with a reason myself, as it's easier to port the native runtime to any platform, than maintain an independent copy in a constant "catch up" mode.
Semi-closed platforms like the iphone/ipod where the proprieters have turned their back on flash?
Re:Adobe has one (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Adobe has one (Score:3, Insightful)
Semi-closed platforms like the iphone/ipod where the proprieters have turned their back on flash?
The introduction of yet another semi-functional Flash alternative is doing nothing to change this position, as it's a practical position, not one of open source ideology. Having it in Java makes this even less interesting to Apple.
Steve Jobs, like any other mobile maker, can have full access to the actual Flash player source code, if he only wanted it. Maintaining an independent port is not cheaper than simply fixing the one Adobe provides.
Re:Adobe has one (Score:5, Insightful)
Semi-closed platforms
Semi?
Don't talk till you hit full compatibility. (Score:5, Insightful)
This means very little. Anyone can make a subset of a language faster then a full implementation.
The Ruby world has been through this recently: Someone comes out with a fantastic runtime that supports 1/8 of the ruby language, and it's 10x faster then everything else!
There's lots of hype, but as development continues the other runtimes get 2x faster, and the new magic runtime gets 5x slower by actually supporting the whole language, and the new magic runtime is now the same speed as the rest of the field, with less compatibility and more memory usage.
So color me skeptical, until this runtime supports the whole language, including transparent overlays and all the stuff that the Adobe guys claim makes Flash slow.
Even the author of this article will tell you this. He recently added:
Update: Please do not think that this implementation is 30x faster than the Flash Player developed by Adobe. One(!) microbenchmark is never a number you should count on. I would like to make clear that I never said this.
That being said, If we're stuck with Flash for at least the near term, I'd like to see projects like this, Gordon [github.com], and Smokescreen [smokescreen.us] take off and perhaps improve our choices in runtimes. I just don't expect magic.
This corroborates what we all know... (Score:2, Insightful)
... java is slow and a memory hog. (for the sarcasm impaired, yes, I'm joking).