Carakan F.A.Q.

What is Carakan?

Carakan is Opera’s new JavaScript engine. It’s still in development, but is already 2.5 times faster than our Opera 10 alpha engine (which itself is 30% faster on real websites than previous versions of Opera). Some aspects are between 5 and 50 times faster!

Why are we developing it?

Because we can! Opera has always been about speed, security and a small memory footprint, so we’re constantly improving these aspects of the browser. Many of today’s web applications depend heavily on JavaScript, and we’re developing what will be the fastest ECMAscript engine on the market.

When will Carakan be available?

Soon. We’ve chosen to talk about it now as we’re discussing it at the Web Directions North conference, but we’re still combing its hair and straightening its tie before we’re ready to let you see it.

How does it work?

It’s a combination of brilliant coding and Scandinavian voodoo magic (“Snowdoo”). If you want more details about the brilliant coding, you can read all about register-based bytecode, automatic object classification and native code generation on the Opera Core Concerns Blog. We’re sworn to secrecy about the Snowdoo. By a Yeti troll.

What does “Carakan” mean?

We thought about naming it “Unicorn-badger”, “StackDonkey” or “Shouting Otter”. But, we’ve chosen the name “Carakan”” (pronounced “Jarakan”), which is the original alphabet from the Indonesian island of Java.

In other words, it’s the purest Java Script. When you try it, you’ll agree.