Life & fun · November 17, 2024
Nova JavaScript Engine
We're building a different kind of JavaScript engine, based on data-oriented design and willingness to try something quite out of left field. This is most concretely visible in our major architectural choices: 1. All data allocated on the JavaScript heap is placed into a type-specific vector. Numbers go into the numbers vector, strings into the strings vector, and so on. 2. All heap references are type-discriminated indexes: A heap number is identified by its discriminant value and the index to which it points to in the numbers vector. 3. Objects are also split up into object kind -specific…
In plain words
Nova is a JavaScript engine built on data-oriented design principles that organize heap data into type-specific vectors. Numbers, strings, objects, and other data types are stored separately, with references using type-discriminated indexes. This architectural approach differs significantly from traditional JavaScript engines, potentially offering different performance characteristics. The engine is available as an open-source project for developers interested in alternative JavaScript runtime implementations.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
We're building a different kind of JavaScript engine, based on data-oriented design and willingness to try something quite out of left field. This is most concretely visible in our major architectural choices: 1. All data allocated on the JavaScript heap is placed into a type-specific vector. Numbers go into the numbers vector, strings into the strings vector, and so on. 2. All heap references are type-discriminated indexes: A heap number is identified by its discriminant value and the index to which it points to in the numbers vector. 3. Objects are also split up into object kind -specific vectors. Ordinary objects go into one vector, Arrays go into another, DataViews into yet another, and so on. 4. Unordinary objects' heap data does not contain ordinary object data but instead they contain an optional index to the ordinary objects vector. 5. Objects are aggressively split into parts to avoid common use-cases having to reading parts that are known to be unused. If this sounds interesting, I've written a few blog posts on the internals of Nova over in our blog, you can jump into that here: https://trynova.dev/blog/what-is-the-nova-javascript-engine
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