River Trail (JavaScript engine): Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 01:07, 30 June 2025

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{{Short description|JavaScript engine developed by Intel, which allows parallel processing}}

{{Infobox software

| name = River Trail

| title =

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| developer = Intel

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| released = <!-- {{Start date and age|YYYY2011|MM|DD09|df=yes/no}} -->

| developer = Intel

| discontinued = yes

| released = <!-- {{Start date|YYYY|MM|DD|df=yes/no}} -->

| latest previewrelease version = v0.35.0

| discontinued =

| latest release versiondate = Intel: {{Start date and age|2015|02|09|df=yes}}

| programming language = [[JavaScript]]

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| language = English

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| genre = [[JavaScript engine]]

| platform =

| license = [[BSD licenses#2-clause|BSD 2-clause]]

| size =

| website = {{URL|https://github.com/IntelLabs/RiverTrail}}

| language =

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| website = {{URL|https://github.com/IntelLabs/RiverTrail}}

}}

'''River Trail''' (also known as '''Parallel JavaScript''') is ana [[open-source software|open-source engine]], specifically a [[softwareJavaScript engine]], designed by [[Intel]] for executing [[JavaScript]] code using [[parallel computing]] on [[multi-core processor]]s. It is [[free and open-source software]] with a [[BSD licenses#2-clause|BSD 2-clause license]].

River Trail was announced at the Intel Developer Forum in September 2011, and demonstrated using a [[Firefox]] extension developed by Intel. [[Brendan Eich]], the original author of JavaScript, promised that he would promote River Trail within [[Ecma International]], saying "The demo shows a 15x speedup over serial JavaScript. It lights up the ridiculously parallel hardware in modern CPUs and GPUs, for audio, video, image processing, automated voice response, computer vision, 3D gaming, etc. – all written in memory-safe, clean, functional JavaScript, without threads and their data races and deadlocks."<ref>{{cite webnews |last1=Metz title|first1=Cade |date=17 September 2011 |title=Intel extends JavaScript for parallel programming | author = Cade Metz | date = 17 September 2011 | url = https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/17/intel_parallel_javascript/ | publisher work= [[The Register]] | accessdate access-date= 2013-04-10 }}</ref> Because River Trail leverages Intel's [[OpenCL]] SDK<ref>{{cite web|last=Hillar|first=Gaston|title=Introducing Intel Labs' River Trail|url=http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/introducing-intel-labs-river-trail/231602396|work=Dr. Dobb's|date=29 September 2011|accessdateaccess-date=29 January 2014}}</ref> it can exploit multiple CPU[[central coresprocessing asunit]] well(CPU) cores asand [[Data parallelism|data parallel]] instructions (ex. [[Advanced Vector Extensions|AVX]] (AVX), [[Streaming SIMD Extensions|SSE]] (SSE)) and the speedup can be greater than the CPU core count would imply.

A native implementation of River Trail in Firefox's [[SpiderMonkey (JavaScript engine)|SpiderMonkey]] [[JavaScript engine]] was announced in September 2012,<ref>{{cite webnews |last1=Halfacree title|first1=Gareth |date=13 September 2012 |title=Intel boosts JavaScript with River Trail release | author = Gareth Halfacree | url = http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2012/09/13/intel-river-trail/1 | date work= 13 September 2012 | publisher = [[bit-tech]] | accessdate access-date= 2013-04-10 }}</ref> and was added to Firefox nightly Firefox builds in April 2013.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=829602 | title = Bug 829602 - ParallelDo intrinsic and self-hosted ParallelArray | publisher website= [[Mozilla Foundation]] | accessdate access-date= 2013-04-10 }}</ref> By January 2015, the code had been removed from Firefox.<ref>{{Cite web |url = https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801869 |title = Bug 801869 - (PJS) PJS: Efficient threaded runtime for data-parallel JavaScript|date = 2015-01-19|accessdate access-date= 2015-04-23 |website = Bugzilla@Mozilla |publisher = Mozilla Foundation|last |last1= |first first1= }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine/H-YEsejE6DA |title=PJS has been removed from Spidermonkey |accessdateaccess-date=2017-10-18}}</ref>

== Operation ==

To use the engine scripts uses a special [[API]], based on three pillars: a [[Datadata type|type]] callednamed <code>ParallelArray</code>, several methods of [[Prototype-based programming|Prototypeprototype]] of <code>ParallelArray</code>, and elementary functions.<ref name="wk3p">{{CitationCite web |title=Three pillars of the API|url=https://github.com/RiverTrail/RiverTrail/wiki/Three-Pillars-of-the-API |accessdateaccess-date=2011-09-14}}</ref>

==References==

{{reflistReflist}}

==External links==

* [https://github.com/{{GitHub|IntelLabs/RiverTrail RiverTrail}}, source on GitHub]code

* Tour of the SpiderMonkey Parallel JS Implementation: [http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2013/03/20/a-tour-of-the-parallel-js-implementation/ Part 1]; [http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2013/04/04/a-tour-of-the-parallel-js-implementation-part-2/ Part 2]

* InfoQ interview: [http://www.infoq.com/interviews/rick-hudson-rivertrail Rick Hudson on Parallel JavaScript (RiverTrail)]

* [http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:data_parallelism Proposed Parallel EcmaScript API]

* [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.rivertrail mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.rivertrail discussion group]

* [https://github.com/IntelLabs/RiverTrail RiverTrail source on GitHub]

{{JavaScript}}