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The JavaScript programming language has been experiencing a renaissance of late, driven by the interest in HTML5. Nashorn is a JavaScript engine implemented fully in Java on the JVM. It is based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) and will be available with JDK 8. This session describes the goals of Project Nashorn, gives a top-level view of how it all works and provides the current status. There are many implementations of JavaScript, meant to run either on the JVM or standalone as native code. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons. The Oracle Nashorn JavaScript project is based on the former approach. This presentation goes through the performance work that has gone on in Oracle’s Nashorn JavaScript project to date in order to make JavaScript-to-bytecode generation for execution on the JVM feasible. It shows that the new invoke dynamic bytecode gets us part of the way there but may not quite be enough. What other tricks did the Nashorn project use? The presentation also discusses future directions for increased performance for dynamic languages on the JVM, covering proposed enhancements to both the JVM itself and to the bytecode compiler.