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RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

blog.chromium.org

41–50 of 161 posts

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#43
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the internet: case in point, the new Xcode 13 has some really embarassing performance problems on my mid-2014 13"MBP. I guess the Xcode team switched to shiny new M1 Macs between Xcode 12 and 13.

I don’t intend this as facetious, but how many years do you expect closed-source OS vendors to support their first-party hardware?

How many years do you expect?

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#44

How come processors and browsers become faster every year but the internet feels as slow and bloated as ever? How long can this x% faster continue? There must be some theoretical optimum, how far are we away?

Popular apps will be as slow as user can tolerate. Because if they're not slow enough, it invites developers to introduce another abstraction layer. Good thing is, that it's possible to create truly groundbreaking apps using non-conventional techniques, as web becomes faster and richer with new APIs. For example with Wasm and WebGPU it's possible to create AAA games running in the browser. Someone will do it. It'll b…

This reminds me of Parkinson's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law). Paraphrased: "complexity expands so as to fill the time available for its consumption". The faster a software can be, the more things it seems to do just for achieving the same features.

It's also probably another view of the Jevons Paradox: as efficiency of software increases, it gives more way for more complexity and "optimizations" that in the end make the end result as slow as before.

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#45
post #39
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t intend this as facetious, but how many years do you expect closed-source OS vendors to support their first-party hardware?

not OP, but for the lifetime of the hardware ? or, at least, should be specified in T&C when buying the hardware I am still pissed off that my 2012 Macbook Air is no longer receiving OS updates - compare that to Microsoft that allows me to run windows on basically any PC

Don’t worry, Microsoft is “fixing” that with windows 11’s requirements :-/

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#46

How come processors and browsers become faster every year but the internet feels as slow and bloated as ever? How long can this x% faster continue? There must be some theoretical optimum, how far are we away?

The only solution to that is if the browser starts absorbing more of the stuff that developers now use javascript for, like UI components etc.

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular apps will be as slow as user can tolerate. Because if they're not slow enough, it invites developers to introduce another abstraction layer. Good thing is, that it's possible to create truly groundbreaking apps using non-conventional techniques, as web becomes faster and richer with new APIs. For example with Wasm and WebGPU it's possible to create AAA games running in the browser. Someone will do it. It'll b…

> For example with Wasm and WebGPU it's possible to create AAA games running in the browser. This has been promised since at least the WebGL and asm.js days. It still won't happen, but not mainly for technical reasons, but for business reasons. ...but of course also some technical reasons. Asm.js/WASM and WebGL/WebGPU are fine, but most other web APIs are a mess and the web is a highly unstable platform, APIs are dea…

> the web needs a proper "DirectX initiative" like what Microsoft did in the late 90's to get Windows gaming off the ground

Why? We can already play AAA games on our computers. It works very well, much better than anything web-based. Why would anyone put effort into replicating the same thing inside the browser?

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#49

How come processors and browsers become faster every year but the internet feels as slow and bloated as ever? How long can this x% faster continue? There must be some theoretical optimum, how far are we away?

Popular apps will be as slow as user can tolerate. Because if they're not slow enough, it invites developers to introduce another abstraction layer. Good thing is, that it's possible to create truly groundbreaking apps using non-conventional techniques, as web becomes faster and richer with new APIs. For example with Wasm and WebGPU it's possible to create AAA games running in the browser. Someone will do it. It'll b…

If only we can charge a price for taking up too much ram or cpu cycles.

Re: RenderingNG: An architecture that makes and keeps Chrome fast for the long term

#50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the internet: case in point, the new Xcode 13 has some really embarassing performance problems on my mid-2014 13"MBP. I guess the Xcode team switched to shiny new M1 Macs between Xcode 12 and 13.

I don’t intend this as facetious, but how many years do you expect closed-source OS vendors to support their first-party hardware?

8-10 years is what the Consumer Rights watchdog expects for devices in the price range of a MacBook in my nation to continue to provide hardware support, so I would say that seems like a reasonable amount of time for there to continue to be software support.

MacBooks aren't cheap. For the average person they are a significant expense. So the lifetime of support should reflect that.

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