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

blog.chromium.org

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

#31

Post by easygenes »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #2

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?

Sometimes I wonder how much of this feeling comes from expecting more from more power/thermal/area constrained devices. My experience working with top-shelf workstation-grade CPUs in mid-tower cases with excellent cooling is far separated from my experience even with M1 Macs. Having 16 cores, 64GB+ RAM, and 300W of thermal capacity is a big improvement.

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-...

Compare Zen 3 to M1... M1 is a generation ahead in lithography and enjoys an appreciable thermal/efficiency advantage resultingly. Zen 3 and M1 have neck-and-neck single core performance on many tasks. Yet Zen 3 can offer many more cores and make up for its efficiency in raw thermal envelope availability.

Then also the expectation from older and more inexpensive devices. If one gets used to M1-level performance, a $200 CPU from 4 years ago starts to look quite slow; e.g., the Ryzen 5 1600:

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m1-vs-amd-ryzen-...

Once we start to look at the truly power constrained, say a mainstream phone from a few years ago; let's say the iPhone 8/X since it's one of the best selling in recent history. Then you're at about 50% of the single threaded performance AND working with fewer cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph...

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_a11_bionic-1...

There is another large factor at play in the past 20 years in particular though: that is the increasing predominance of "Python-like" languages. I mean that in the sense that more of the code we interact with on a daily basis is written at a very high level than 20 years ago. Python in particular is just about the least efficient of all the most widely deployed languages.

Ranking Programming Languages by Energy Efficiency: https://haslab.github.io/SAFER/scp21.pdf

2021 Top Languages: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages/

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

#32

Post by realusername »

flohofwoe wrote: post #19
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #2

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?

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.

It's good I need to use the apple laptop & Xcode only just to build my flutter app, otherwise I would have given up just how slow it is, every click takes ~5 seconds.

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

#33

Post by sirk390 »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #2

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?

Https multiplied latency by three when opening websites compared to 10/15years ago where many websites were http.

And also many websites include more tracking, for example Google search results used to directly send you to the result page. Now they first send you to Google so that they know you clicked but it also adds noticeable latency.

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

#34

Post by flohofwoe »

nsomaru wrote: post #23
flohofwoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What are the business reasons? Surely the web is just a platform for delivery? Payment etc can happen through the browser.

I agree, but tell that to the "money people" in big game studios ;) The web simply isn't on their radar, even mobile isn't for the most part. They want strong centralized platforms like Steam, EGS, Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo and a platform owner to negotiate with.

This can change very quickly if there's actually some breakthrough web game, but that hasn't happened so far, and nobody wants to be the first to take the risk.

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

#36

Post by omnicognate »

onion2k wrote: post #20
omnicognate wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the total energy saved across all devices? The only context in which anybody could give a fig about that is as it relates to total global energy consumption, of which it is an utterly neglible speck. Edit: Had a go at putting some numbers on that for fun, and will partially retract my comment (no I don't, see below). If it takes [1] around 0.01kWh to charge a smartphone, there are [2] around 6 billion smartp…

Everything is neglible in comparison to global energy consumption though, because we use energy for so many different things. If everyone who is in a position to reduce the energy consumption of their small part significantly does their part then it will add up to a significant effort.

I don't disagree at all, but the comment I was responding to was saying that globally it's "massive" which it really isn't. Every little helps, but this is little.

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

#37

Post by solarkraft »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #2

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?

What the browser giveth, the web developer taketh away.

I tremendously hate it and it’s not like developers are incapable of building performant software, quite the opposite. But that’s just not where the resources go. The common sentiment (I have heard this directly uttered) is “If the user has 8GB of RAM, why wouldn’t I use it?”.

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

#38

Post by omnicognate »

yunohn wrote: post #18
omnicognate wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the total energy saved across all devices? The only context in which anybody could give a fig about that is as it relates to total global energy consumption, of which it is an utterly neglible speck. Edit: Had a go at putting some numbers on that for fun, and will partially retract my comment (no I don't, see below). If it takes [1] around 0.01kWh to charge a smartphone, there are [2] around 6 billion smartp…

Yes, Google (and other global companies) actually cares about that. They work on fleet-level changes to make such differences worth it. It might not matter to you though.

What fleet-level changes are you referring to? The energy saving is certainly a nice thing (environmentally if nothing else) but it's not energy they are paying for. I don't see how it would change Google's operations in any way.

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

#39

Post by ddalex »

afgrant wrote: post #25
flohofwoe wrote: post #19

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?

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

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

#40

Post by Traubenfuchs »

vultour wrote: post #8
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #2

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?

Why is this comment flagged?

Some 10x rockstar developer with a wrinklebrain considered it low IQ rambling and got offended but got quickly btfo by fellow smoothbrain hackernews readers who share my sentiments.
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