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Building a more power-efficient browser

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#11

Post by eightysix_four »

mtgx wrote: post #8

I wish they didn't do these tests on a Microsoft-made Surface Book...They should've taken a couple of other popular Windows 10 notebooks and maybe do the tests on those. Who knows how much of this difference is because of Edge itself (which is how well it would work on other notebooks, too), and how much it's the optimization they did for Edge for their own hardware.

They say they test across hardware in the article - the Surface Book is the only one they pictured because it's an MS blog and an opportunity to advertise MS hardware.

Besides, I'm pretty sure lowering the number of frames in an animation (among the other fixes/features they mention) is going to pretty much universally lower power requirements.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#13

Post by mey »

JBiserkov wrote: post #3
gtirloni wrote: post #2

That's pretty nice but the lack of plugins means I can't have LastPass/1Password, uBlock, etc, which kills it for me.

Extensions are coming with the anniversary update in a month or so, I'm excited!

I have a Surface Book, once Edge support EFF Privacy Badger, Edge will likely become my default browser.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#14

Post by lewisl9029 »

Some interesting optimizations in here, but I'm curious about this one in particular:

> With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge only executes background JavaScript timers once per second in background tabs. More importantly, these timers are coalesced with other work happening across Windows. Microsoft Edge doesn’t wake up the hardware to perform work. Instead we tag along with other work happening across the system, and then quickly yield, allowing the hardware to enter a low power state.

Are there any implications for web techs (maybe like WebTorrent?) that do need to run JS constantly in the background?

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#16

Post by 1_2__3 »

542458 wrote: post #10
cptskippy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really an Apples to Oranges comparison since Macs and PCs aren't comparable. Yes you could run Windows in BootCamp but it isn't tuned for that and is actually hampered. It would be like making a Surface Pro a hackintosh and using that as a basis for comparison.

> you could run Windows in BootCamp but it isn't tuned for that and is actually hampered How is bootcamp'ed windows hampered? It works perfectly fine for me. In fact, it's better than many Windows laptops I've used because they almost all ship with so much bloatware on them.

The HW has proprietary power management features that Windows cannot take advantage of. For the end user it's probably no big deal, but I think the commenter you replied to is right - power management is a delicate dance between hardware and software, and not all hardware is accessible from all software on every platform.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#17

Post by derefr »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #14

Some interesting optimizations in here, but I'm curious about this one in particular: > With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge only executes background JavaScript timers once per second in background tabs. More importantly, these timers are coalesced with other work happening across Windows. Microsoft Edge doesn’t wake up the hardware to perform work. Instead we tag along with other work happening across the sys…

I'm not sure about Edge in particular, but on most platform runtimes "timers" are separate from IO-availability-triggered asynchronous events. When a WebRTC data connection signals its send channel has become unblocked/receive channel has data available, a handler will be called right then; there's no timer involved. Timers are just for things that have no relevant IO to control them, like animations.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#18

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #14

Some interesting optimizations in here, but I'm curious about this one in particular: > With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge only executes background JavaScript timers once per second in background tabs. More importantly, these timers are coalesced with other work happening across Windows. Microsoft Edge doesn’t wake up the hardware to perform work. Instead we tag along with other work happening across the sys…

In Safari, which slows background JavaScript down or stops it altogether, music stops playing occasionally on Soundcloud when a song ends. The only option to prevent this is to make the Soundcloud tab the sole tab in the browser window. The window can be in the background but the tab is not treated as background tab because it is the active tab in the window.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#19

Post by acqq »

re: The reading mode button animation batery use improved

Who needs the button animation at all? I like them not moving, every movement of something that's always on the same place is distracting.

It's stunning on what they spend the energy of the management and the programmers, not only of the CPU's and GPU's of all of us.

"We replaced the traditional XAML animation with a timed GPU transform, and now animate the contents through a viewport – relying entirely on the GPU to perform the work."

Apparently XAML is a traditional way to animate GUI buttons there. Wow.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#20

Post by derefr »

1_2__3 wrote: post #16
542458 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could run Windows in BootCamp but it isn't tuned for that and is actually hampered How is bootcamp'ed windows hampered? It works perfectly fine for me. In fact, it's better than many Windows laptops I've used because they almost all ship with so much bloatware on them.

The HW has proprietary power management features that Windows cannot take advantage of. For the end user it's probably no big deal, but I think the commenter you replied to is right - power management is a delicate dance between hardware and software, and not all hardware is accessible from all software on every platform.

"Can't" and "won't" are distinct; if Apple doesn't want to write e.g. Power Nap drivers for Windows, Microsoft could certainly do it. (I'm surprised they haven't; Windows has the incentive to work well everywhere much more than Macs have an incentive to run everything equally well.)
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