Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser

#61

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 12:27 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #48

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #45

Amdahl's law. You can get the browser itself down to nothing and it's totally futile because as soon as you open a page Flash Player will still peg the CPU.

They did test playing videos through both Flash and HTML5, and found that power draw still varied significantly depending on browser, with IE drawing 30-40% less power than Chrome (after subtracting out at-desktop idle power). So there's definitely still low-hanging fruit for the browser itself.

Playing video isn't the thing that causes Flash Player to be a CPU suck. The video playing is the responsibility of the video codec, which itself is probably using the GPU. You can play HD video on a Pentium 4, and if you notice in the tests the CPU consumption for Flash Player playing video wasn't preposterously higher than it was for HTML5, which is obviously uncharacteristic of Flash Player's normal behavior.

The problem with Flash Player is that people create busy loops in ActionScript, especially in ads. You open a dozen tabs, one of them has one of these ads, your CPU is pegged. If you're worried about "browser power consumption" and your first step is not to shoot Flash Player in the head, you're doing it wrong.

Re: Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser

#62

Post by iamshs » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 2:26 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #49

kevingadd wrote: post #23

It's not that hard to optimize for power draw in software if you're willing to do the work to measure and tune. Lots of simple optimizations can produce huge gains, whether it's using the correct timer APIs to allow the OS to coalesce timer events (Raymond Chen wrote a blog post about how this allows the CPU to stay in sleep mode longer on Windows by serving all timers on say, 1000ms intervals instead of 999ms/1000ms…

From the study: "In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to “conserve power” in the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all computers tested was set to “maximum performance.” We did not investigate the impact of this setting upon browser power draw." So yeah, IE got some optimization applied, and unfairly so, since the other b…

No, default power settings on a laptop do that, if it is put in a power saving or Balanced mode. It is not a specific IE option, but Windows OS option.

Re: Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser

#63

Post by Zhenya » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:24 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #40

Zhenya wrote: post #2

Prius has the best tire wear - bested the ferrari. I am not looking to optimize energy usage with a browser; I am looking to optimize speed and security. Complete straw man .

When you are running on batteries, conserving power is certainly worth optimizing for.

Oh really? And what OS is IE mostly used on? Let me answer that for you - Windows. I think there are a lower hanging fruit than browser power optimization that can save on battery life on a windows powered machine.

Re: Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser

#64

Post by WayneDB » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #26

bhauer wrote: post #19

The anti-Microsoft air is thick enough in here that it stings my eyes. (Note I am an avid Mozilla fan.)

That's actually a great analogy, because Microsoft and an onion share a lot of similarities: layers and layers of bureaucracy, products that taste sour and marketing that makes your eyes sting.

And yet, somehow, they still have better documentation than Mozilla.