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Scalability

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Re: Scalability

#151

Post by tptacek »

icebraining wrote: post #79
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't follow what you're trying to say here. I'm probably just misunderstanding you. Someone suggested that Firefox had memory segmentation, and just did it with threads. That's obviously not accurate. Then you said, "they have it, just with javascript objects". What mainstream browser allows javascript in a tab to access objects in any other page, let alone another tab?

Depends on what JS it is. Obviously websites can't, but a huge part of Firefox is coded in JS, which runs with high privileges. It's perfectly possible that tab specific trusted JS code (including possibly extensions code) wasn't compartmentalized and now is.

Sure! Just keep in mind that a lot of that "trusted JS" is actually just a thin wrapper around C/C++ code, and the C/C++ code tends to be where the problems arise.

Re: Scalability

#152

Post by scott_s »

rpearl wrote: post #111
scott_s wrote: post #23

Windows, Linux or OSX? I'm curious because on Linux, threads and processes are essentially the same thing - they're the same data structure in the kernel. But as far as I know, that is not true on Windows. I also find his conclusion a bit disingenuous: I never have more than ~10 tabs open. I'm more interested in the performance around my actual usage, not an order of magnitude more.

Processes and threads are both schedulable entities in linux, which is a bit muddled, but when we talk about processes, it still implies a separate address space. That's the whole point of distinguishing them. Of course the more sane model is for a process to be an address space container, and threads to be associated with a particular process, but when discussing them, that particular implementation detail is moot.

Right, I know what processes and threads are under Linux; instance of task_struct. But I'm asking because if we're going to understand why he's seeing the performance he presented, we need to know the kind of system he's running on. And how Linux treats threads and processes is one major difference between it and Windows.

Re: Scalability

#154

Post by rpearl »

scott_s wrote: post #152
rpearl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Processes and threads are both schedulable entities in linux, which is a bit muddled, but when we talk about processes, it still implies a separate address space. That's the whole point of distinguishing them. Of course the more sane model is for a process to be an address space container, and threads to be associated with a particular process, but when discussing them, that particular implementation detail is moot.

Right, I know what processes and threads are under Linux; instance of task_struct. But I'm asking because if we're going to understand why he's seeing the performance he presented, we need to know the kind of system he's running on. And how Linux treats threads and processes is one major difference between it and Windows.

No, my argument is that the point is moot. If a task_struct on linux does not trigger an address space switch it is a thread. While to the kernel they are (regrettably) the same entity, they still have relevant performance characteristics of windows {process, thread}; the difference in cost is the cost of switching address spaces. That cost appears in either operating system. If there is any difference from the way Windows handles threads it is simply negligible in terms of this benchmark.

Re: Scalability

#155

Post by nnethercote »

tjoff wrote: post #150

Humm. My experience are completely opposite. In my experience firefox breaks down quite fast and chrome has always been many orders of magnitude better than any browser I've tested (firefox, (safari), opera, IE). I have about 500 tabs in chrome now, never been close to that with any other browser, granted the computer is barely usable now as chrome takes pretty much all resources so I'm working on closing some down :…

Firefox 7 and 8 (both in development) are much better behaved over long sessions. You should give one of them a try.

Re: Scalability

#156

Post by nnethercote »

chrislomax wrote: post #14

I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome after their appalling release of Firefox 4 & 5. 5 Is better than 4, but only slightly. In most cases, Chrome out performs Firefox now and it's a shame that I had to switch from Firefox. Although these are real world statistics you encountered, I still think that Firefox needs to buck their ideas up and start releasing more stable versions.

Yeah, FF4 had its problems. FF5 and FF6 fixed some of them, but I think you'll really like FF7. Try it out!

Re: Scalability

#157

Post by bane »

Flam wrote: post #99
cbs wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you feel doesn't really matter when you're doing anything other than idle browsing. This morning I had about 30 tabs open when I came into work, all documentation or reference of some sort that I will use in the next few hours. And thats about the lowest I ever get, if I'm looking up something new to me or complex it will easily shoot over 100.

I'm afraid I disagree. There's no way you could multi-task all 30 open tabs at the same time. Read what you need and close the tab when you're done. Leave only the topmost page of the documentation open so you can find your way back down again if you need to. You should be able to tell whether a page has value to you or not within the first 30 seconds of skimming through it. Do you open every result on google for the…

"You should be able to tell whether a page has value to you or not within the first 30 seconds of skimming through it."

We don't read the same things apparently.

Re: Scalability

#158

Post by doctoboggan »

Perceval wrote: post #141
doctoboggan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a google chrome extension for 4chan that will let you preload all images or open all images inline. It also auto fetches new replys and loads them inline aswell. I am on my phone right now so I can't find what it is called, but IIRC it was the most popular and highest rated 4chan extension.

I have that Chrome extension and a similar one for Safari. I just dislike opening images inline or all loaded into one separate tab, because then it turns saving individual images into a mouse-driven task rather than a keyboard-driven task. As an aside: what do you use to browse Hacker News on your phone?

I just use safari, is there a better option?

Re: Scalability

#159

Post by jkmcf »

dspillett wrote: post #90
d0m wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 tabs.. how is that possible? Do you ctrl+click on every possible links on every page?! I'm actually really surprised. I, too, can't stand more than 5-6..

I tend to have several windows with sevaral tabs open for different categories: things to send to people next time they are online, personal techie things I intend to read when I get a minute, work related similar, and so on. Yes I could use bookmarks and such for these, but I find this a more immediate reminder. Every now and then I scan round these windows and close off things that have slipped into irrelevance or…

FWIW, I usually have between 10 and 30 tabs opened simultaneously and I'm usually pushing 1G ever since 4.0 rolled out. I may cycle 100-200 over a few hours and then have to restart to reclaim memory (only 4G).

Similar usage with 3.x rarely exceeded 300MB and FF would remain open for weeks.

Re: Scalability

#160

Post by alok-g »

rmccue wrote: post #48
tytso wrote: post #5

Performance is the side-effect, not the cause. The cause is the fact that chrome uses separate processes both for security, and so if one tab crashes, you don't lose them all. The fact that it uses more memory is a design tradeoff (although with shared text pages it's not as bad as one might think). The real question is whether you would ever have that many tabs open, and how much memory do you have on your desktop?

> The real question is whether you would ever have that many tabs open, and how much memory do you have on your desktop? I have 60 tabs open now (in FF), and this is after closing most of them, on a 32-bit system with 4GB of RAM. I regularly hit over 200 tabs when browsing.

Are you using the tabs as bookmarks or a task list? Browser may withstand it, how can a human brain!
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