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A new speed milestone for Chrome

blog.chromium.org

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Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#91
post #70

Why is it chrome specifically on chromium blog ? Does this not mean chromium and chromium based browsers also ?

As far as I can tell, none of these changes are in code that is specific to Chrome, so yes, I would expect these improvements to also apply to Chromium-based browsers.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#92

IMO Chrome desperately needs to minimize its memory usage.

Memory is like $3-4/GB (decently fast DDR4). And you've been fine with 16GB for a decade without upgrading.

If you're stuck on some un-upgradable old budget device, it's unlikely the memory holding you back either.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#93

I think that browser developers are optimizing the wrong thing. Specifically: they optimize for execution speed while they better optimize for minimum memory usage instead. Let me explain why this is more important. Let's say I am visiting a properly made website and it takes 10% of CPU to render. Even if browser devs make their browser twice faster, it will only save 5% of CPU time - and that would be completely unn…

The reason for the focus on CPU time is that it has the larger impact on battery life.

You'd be surprised (I was), but high memory usage is also a power drain.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#94

I think that browser developers are optimizing the wrong thing. Specifically: they optimize for execution speed while they better optimize for minimum memory usage instead. Let me explain why this is more important. Let's say I am visiting a properly made website and it takes 10% of CPU to render. Even if browser devs make their browser twice faster, it will only save 5% of CPU time - and that would be completely unn…

Well all know what the "solution" here is: to have multiple browser vendors, each optimising for something else. Imagine having a lightweight browser ran a bit slower but could run on a potato with 512MB or RAM. Or one that optimises for viewing static documents (you know - websites) and so uses barely any CPU when idle, but might not support all the crazy JS features.

Of course, having turned browsers into virtual machines, there isn't much specialisation that can be done without breaking things. Might it be time to create a subset of features that sites could limit themselves to and allow browsers to use a simpler and faster render pipeline? You know, like what we thought AMP was going to be before it turned out to have Google's monopolistic shit smeared all over it.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#96

I think that browser developers are optimizing the wrong thing. Specifically: they optimize for execution speed while they better optimize for minimum memory usage instead. Let me explain why this is more important. Let's say I am visiting a properly made website and it takes 10% of CPU to render. Even if browser devs make their browser twice faster, it will only save 5% of CPU time - and that would be completely unn…

> I think that browser developers are optimizing the wrong thing.

> You might ask, what about modern websites [...] I am not using such sites so I don't care.

They might be optimizing the wrong thing for you, but the majority do use "modern sites"

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Memory is cheap. Battery life isn't.

High memory consumption eats battery life too

Given that only one of those components tends to have active cooling as a requirement, I'll assume that the difference in energy consumption is at least an order of magnitude. Happy to be proven wrong though.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#98

There are certainly lots of situations where one browser beats another For example in this microbenchmark, Chrome is 10x slower than both FF and Safari at one method. https://jsbenchit.org/?src=cfcb916dd03df45952183e6484a14344 Here's another where in one case Firefox is 54x faster than Chrome https://jsbenchit.org/?src=beb26575ad78caa99a2a8c45ce2b780f

https://jsbench.github.io/#b39045cacae8d8c4a3ec044e538533dc Look at DOM performance. Chrome has a ceiling of about 45m ops/s where FF max speed is dependent upon your ram and bus speed reaching beyond 4-5b ops/s. In both though querySelectors perform at about the same speeds as slow as 25000 ops/s. I have written an OS GUI that executes in the browser. It loads, including full state restoration in about 120ms. I was…

> Despite all of this my biggest learning about performance is that mentioning performance during job interviews shows that you are incompatible with other JavaScript developers and will not be hired.

As someone who done plenty of JS, cares about performance and also has handled hiring for JS positions in the past, I can tell you that this is generally not true. Caring about performance is not a reason to not get hired.

But it is possible to be "technically superior" in every conceivable way, but still not be a good hire. Why? Because the candidate might be missing vital soft skills or even not be very good at describing their thoughts, something that can slow down an entire team.

"Learning the wrong lesson" when things go wrong would also be something I'd consider high up for reasons to reject a candidate.

Re: A new speed milestone for Chrome

#100

There are certainly lots of situations where one browser beats another For example in this microbenchmark, Chrome is 10x slower than both FF and Safari at one method. https://jsbenchit.org/?src=cfcb916dd03df45952183e6484a14344 Here's another where in one case Firefox is 54x faster than Chrome https://jsbenchit.org/?src=beb26575ad78caa99a2a8c45ce2b780f

https://jsbench.github.io/#b39045cacae8d8c4a3ec044e538533dc Look at DOM performance. Chrome has a ceiling of about 45m ops/s where FF max speed is dependent upon your ram and bus speed reaching beyond 4-5b ops/s. In both though querySelectors perform at about the same speeds as slow as 25000 ops/s. I have written an OS GUI that executes in the browser. It loads, including full state restoration in about 120ms. I was…

>I could demonstrate that JavaScript tool can execute file system search much faster than the OS

What do you mean? How do you search the file system without calling into the OS?

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