4 ms·

Servo: Parallelizing the Browser

102 points by todd8 12y ago

imaginenore 12y ago
Holy crap, the background image for that presentation slides is 780KB and the background image for the page is 786KB http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/images/bg-darkgrey-2.png http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/image... http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/images/bg-sandstone-2.png http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/image... Think of the mobile users!
sbierwagen 12y ago
(slides)
mercurial 12y ago
I wonder if Servo is advanced enough to get some performance numbers on large pages compared to other engines. In any case, I'm looking forward to see what becomes of it. Like Rust, it seems a well thought-out approach to solving difficult problems.
- larsberg 12y ago
  My intern, Laleh Beni, gave a talk last week where she compared the performance of Servo on a synthetic benchmark to that of Firefox on Android: https://air.mozilla.org/servos-power-struggle/ https://air.mozilla.org/servos-power-struggle/ We're not publishing comparisons with other engines for now because we don't support the full web platform yet in Servo and it doesn't make for a fair comparison against them. Certainly, we benchmark against other engines internally and try to ensure Servo's page load times are at least as fast as the other engines. That said, we don't have incremental layout yet, so Servo is _way_ behind on any measurement involving dynamic page updates. Lots of good progress, but we also still have lots of work to do! (shameless plug to solicit contributors: https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md )
nobodysfool 12y ago
I just don't understand the justification for this. > pre 2000 I'm pretty sure a lot of good technology is written pre-2000. Why you'd want to throw it away is beyond me. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's outdated. > difficult to experiment or fundamentally change Generally with mature products this is true, so the solution is to use an immature product? Why not just take the time to learn the existing products so that you can experiment or make your changes. > security and performance are hard It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. The only thing it will do is make the developer an expert on the system (since she designed it). The diagrams don't make sense, and seem to miss the point. Not all scripts will cause the layout to change. Some may, but the renderer shouldn't be controlling the script, except in extreme or very specific cases.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  It's a research project. Maturity has nothing to do with it. There's literally no plans for Servo apart from research. > It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. Except that we have ridiculously few memory-safe systems programming languages. Rust is one, I believe Ada is another. Provably memory-safe code means no more stack/buffer overflows, no more writing to random bits of memory, and in Rust's case it can be for almost free.
  - pcwalton 12y ago
    Ada isn't memory-safe with dynamic allocation (unless you use GC). Dynamic allocation is essential for a Web browser.
- cygx 12y ago
  > security and performance are hard It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. Sure it's hard and always will be. But the point is that C++ makes it harder than it needs to be. That's where Rust comes in.
- wtetzner 12y ago
  > Generally with mature products this is true, so the solution is to use an immature product? Why not just take the time to learn the existing products so that you can experiment or make your changes. It's not hard to experiment or make changes because they don't know the software, it's because the structure of the software is hard to change. Sometimes the best way to move forward is to start new, using everything you've learned from previous projects.
bburky 12y ago
Video: https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/servo_building_a_parallel_web_browser/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/servo_buildin...

102 points by todd8 12y ago

Holy crap, the background image for that presentation slides is 780KB and the background image for the page is 786KB http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/images/bg-darkgrey-2.png http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/image... http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/images/bg-sandstone-2.png http://www.joshmatthews.net/fosdemservo/themes/mozilla/image... Think of the mobile users!

sbierwagen 12y ago

(slides)

mercurial 12y ago

I wonder if Servo is advanced enough to get some performance numbers on large pages compared to other engines. In any case, I'm looking forward to see what becomes of it. Like Rust, it seems a well thought-out approach to solving difficult problems.

larsberg 12y ago
My intern, Laleh Beni, gave a talk last week where she compared the performance of Servo on a synthetic benchmark to that of Firefox on Android: https://air.mozilla.org/servos-power-struggle/ https://air.mozilla.org/servos-power-struggle/ We're not publishing comparisons with other engines for now because we don't support the full web platform yet in Servo and it doesn't make for a fair comparison against them. Certainly, we benchmark against other engines internally and try to ensure Servo's page load times are at least as fast as the other engines. That said, we don't have incremental layout yet, so Servo is _way_ behind on any measurement involving dynamic page updates. Lots of good progress, but we also still have lots of work to do! (shameless plug to solicit contributors: https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/servo/servo/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md )

nobodysfool 12y ago

I just don't understand the justification for this. > pre 2000 I'm pretty sure a lot of good technology is written pre-2000. Why you'd want to throw it away is beyond me. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's outdated. > difficult to experiment or fundamentally change Generally with mature products this is true, so the solution is to use an immature product? Why not just take the time to learn the existing products so that you can experiment or make your changes. > security and performance are hard It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. The only thing it will do is make the developer an expert on the system (since she designed it). The diagrams don't make sense, and seem to miss the point. Not all scripts will cause the layout to change. Some may, but the renderer shouldn't be controlling the script, except in extreme or very specific cases.

vertex-four 12y ago
It's a research project. Maturity has nothing to do with it. There's literally no plans for Servo apart from research. > It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. Except that we have ridiculously few memory-safe systems programming languages. Rust is one, I believe Ada is another. Provably memory-safe code means no more stack/buffer overflows, no more writing to random bits of memory, and in Rust's case it can be for almost free.
- pcwalton 12y ago
  Ada isn't memory-safe with dynamic allocation (unless you use GC). Dynamic allocation is essential for a Web browser.
cygx 12y ago
> security and performance are hard It's always been that way, and it always will be. I doubt a new library/platform will change that. Sure it's hard and always will be. But the point is that C++ makes it harder than it needs to be. That's where Rust comes in.
wtetzner 12y ago
> Generally with mature products this is true, so the solution is to use an immature product? Why not just take the time to learn the existing products so that you can experiment or make your changes. It's not hard to experiment or make changes because they don't know the software, it's because the structure of the software is hard to change. Sometimes the best way to move forward is to start new, using everything you've learned from previous projects.

bburky 12y ago

Video: https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/servo_building_a_parallel_web_browser/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/servo_buildin...