Simon Willison's Weblog: tamarin

Running C and Python Code on The Web

2008-07-04T08:26:27+00:00

Running C and Python Code on The Web

Adobe are working on a toolchain to compile C code to target the Tamarin VM in Flash. This will allow existing C code (from CPython to Quake) to execute in a safe sandbox in the browser.

Tags: adobe, browser, c, flash, python, quake, tamarin

Why Tamarin instead of...

2007-08-09T12:43:33+00:00

Why Tamarin instead of...

Justification for Tamarin in Mozilla over Mono and the JVM. It mainly comes down to license compatibility and overall size.

Tags: java, john-resig, jvm, mono, mozilla, open-source, tamarin

Quoting Aaron Straup Cope

2007-07-29T21:17:02+00:00

The recent announcement that Mozilla's next JavaScript engine, Tamarin, will also be a container for functionality written in Python and Ruby (and, one assumes, beyond) is proof that JavaScript is the new Parrot.

— Aaron Straup Cope

Tags: aaron-straup-cope, javascript, mozilla, parrot, python, ruby, tamarin

Brendan Eich: New Projects

2007-07-26T20:05:02+00:00

Brendan Eich: New Projects

Exciting new projects from Mozilla. ActionMonkey is joined by IronMonkey (IronPython/IronRuby on Tamarin) and ScreamingMonkey (Tamarin for IE). Upgrading IE’s JavaScript using the Flash Player as a vector is a game-changing idea.

Tags: actionmonkey, brendan-eich, flash, internet-explorer, ironmonkey, ironpython, ironruby, javascript, mozilla, screamingmonkey, tamarin

ActionMonkey

2007-07-24T15:29:33+00:00

ActionMonkey

SpiderMonkey + Tamarin = ActionMonkey. New JavaScript engine for Mozilla 2, incorporating code from Adobe’s Open Source ActionScript VM.

Via John Resig

Tags: actionmonkey, actionscript, adobe, javascript, mozilla, spidermonkey, tamarin

Tamarin

2006-11-09T12:24:45+00:00

On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe announced the Tamarin project, an open-source ECMAScript virtual machine based on the ActionScript engine used by Flash Player 9.

Frank Hecker's overview of what this means is useful, but the Tamarin source code itself provides this interesting piece of historical insight:

AVM+ is the ActionScript Virtual Machine

AVM+ offers an order of magnitude performance increase over the "Classic AVM" in Flash Player 7. Our performance target is 10X.

AVM+ implements ActionScript 3.0, the new version of the ActionScript language that is compliant with the ECMAScript Edition 4 standard.

AVM+ is also built for modularity. It will be part of the Flash Player, but is a self-contained module which can be incorporated into other programs with ease. It may also be submitted to the ECMA standards organization as a reference implementation of ECMAScript Edition 4.

Adobe's reputation for solid engineering shines through here - it seems that what is now Tamarin was designed for integration with other applications from the very start.

The most important thing we can expect from this is a serious improvement in JavaScript performance in the Mozilla family of products, thanks to Tamarin's JIT compiler that can convert ECMAScript bytecode to machine code at runtime. JavaScript/Ajax applications will run faster, and the Mozilla applications themselves will perform better as much of their UI is written in JavaScript and XUL.

This performance boost will benefit other applications as well. Tamarin is being integrated with SpiderMonkey, which is used in a variety of applications such as the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

Reading through Brendan Eich's technical overview of Mozilla 2, it looks like the Mozilla team also plan on taking advantage of this performance boost to move code from C++ to JavaScript 2 in many places, simplifying their code base and reducing the likelihood of security flaws in the code.

Even in these buzzword filled days of Ajax and Web 2.0, JavaScript is still seen as a poor cousin to so-called "real" programming languages. With a high performance open-source VM like Tamarin available, maybe more developers will start to re-examine JavaScript's role outside the browser.

Tags: actionscript, adobe, javascript, mozilla, tamarin