Opera Prepping Superfast “Carakan” JavaScript Engine

Opera is getting into the game of speedy JavaScript processing with a new JavaScript engine called Carakan. The under-development engine is said to be 2.5 times faster than the engine available now in Opera 10.

That engine — called Futhark — was designed to cut down on memory usage rather than hit the highest possible speed, engineers say. Now, they’re ready to step up to the starting line and duke it out with Firefox and Chrome for the “fastest browser on the market” title. (Sorry, IE. You really just can’t compete here, not even with IE8.)

So what’s the deal with the name? “The name Carakan, like the names of Opera’s previous ECMAScript engines, Futhark, Linear A and Linear B, is the name of a writing system, or ‘script,'” engineers say.

Carakan is currently being tested on a small-scale basis. Developers hope to have it released in a future Opera version as soon as they can.

You can read the full details of how the JavaScript engine differs from past versions in the Opera blog here.