New Firefox Project Could Mean Multi-Processor Support

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Mozilla Links "Mozilla has started a new project to make Firefox split in several processes at a time: one running the main user interface (chrome), and another or several others running the web content in each tab. Like Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 which have implemented this behavior to some degree, the main benefit would be the increase of stability: a single tab crash would not take down the whole session with it, as well as performance improvements in multiprocessor systems that are progressively becoming the norm. The project, which lacks a catchy name like other Mozilla projects (like TaskFox, Ubiquity, or Chocolate Factory) is coordinated by long time Mozillian, Benjamin Smedberg; and also integrated by Joe Drew, Jason Duell, Ben Turner, and Boris Zbarsky in the core team. According to the loose roadmap published, a simple implementation that works with a single tab (not sessions support, no secure connections, either on Linux or Windows, probably not even based on Firefox) should be reached around mid-July."

Comments

As a Developer the Question I Have Is ...

[eldavojohn]

Why isn't everyone doing this?

As chipmakers demo 64 or 128 core chips, why aren't we coding and being trained in Erlang? Why aren't schools teaching this as a mandatory class? Why aren't old applications being broken down and analyzed to multithread components that don't interact? Why isn't the compiler theory concentrating on how to automate this (if possible)?

It's becoming obvious the number of cores is going to far outweigh the number of applications we'll be running five years from now (so you can't leave it up to the OS) so why isn't this a bigger concentration now in application development?

I understand a lot of server side stuff can take advantage of this (in the nature of serving many clients at once) but it's only a matter of time before it's typical on the desktop.

Re:As a Developer the Question I Have Is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erlang is a very poor choice for true multi-threaded programming. It does "lightweight" threads very nicely but real multi-CPU stuff is very slow. To the point that it negates using multiple processors in the first place.

While I like programming in Erlang, its performance sucks donkey balls. Even the HIPE stuff is pretty damn slow.

Plus the learning curve for functional languages is pretty high. Most programmers take a good bit of training to "get it", if they ever do. I have been programming in Erlang for about 5 years and even though I get it, I still prefer the "normal" programming languages like C/C++, Lua, Perl, whatever. I use functional tricks and I wish some of those imperative languages had more functional features but I think they work more like the human mind does and that helps me program better.

We do need something to make multiple-CPU programming easier though. Threaded programming in C/C++ or similar can turn into a nightmare real quick, it's error prone and complicated.

responsiveness

[Lord Ender]

I think the main benefit of such a system would be responsiveness. It is very unpleasant when one tab temporarily causes the entire browser window to become completely unresponsive--including the STOP button or the button to CLOSE the misbehaving tab. The UI should never freeze for any reason.