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Can someone explain to me why ppl think that splitting the browser application into separate processes will positively affect performance?
by RandyRanderson 9y ago
Can someone explain to me why ppl think that splitting the browser application into separate processes will positively affect performance?
- 1123581321 9y ago1. Separate processes for UI and tab rendering/computation. Same reason iOS is always smooth; in addition to allowing faster access to menus, inspector, extensions etc., it simply feels faster to experience an interface at a constant 60fps. 2. Can pass work off to more CPU cores. I'm not sure of the real world performance gain, but theoretically you could render three heavy tabs and the Firefox UI on a 4 processor CPU almost as fast as one heavy tab in single processor mode.
- RandyRanderson 9y agoAll browsers use multiple threads internally so single process browsers too can use mutliple cores and, in fact, can more efficiently. Further, most popular modern operating systems handle processes and threads similarly internally. I'm not sure what you mean by 60 fps. 2d apps typically don't have render loops as games do - they only "composit" graphics typically by updating the UI only if a section needs to be re-drawn.
- 1123581321 9y agoI am sure you are right, but Mozilla says FF used one process, currently uses two (one for UI, one for content) and the final version of multiprocess will use more for web content and extensions. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir... I shouldn't have said 60fps. I just meant low or no interface lag. Regardless of what the system is trying to do internally, Firefox has performance issues in the UI, so hopefully they can address those.