What is the Nova JavaScript engine? · Nova

Let me answer that question as quickly as I can without skipping too much of the details: Nova is a JavaScript engine being built by me and a group of compatriots that takes a data-oriented approach to engine design. This is most concretely visible in our major architectural choices: 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. 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. 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. Unordinary objects' heap data does not contain ordinary object data but instead they contain an optional index to the ordinary objects vector. Objects are aggressively split into parts to avoid common use-cases having to reading parts that are known to be unused.