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A Look At Microsoft's 'Mini Internet' For Testing IE
MrSeb writes "With the grandiose bluster that only an aging juggernaut can pull off, Microsoft has detailed the Internet Explorer Performance Lab and its extraordinary efforts to ensure IE9 is competitive and IE10 is the fastest browser in the world. Here are a few bullet points: 128 test computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, 480GB of runtime data per day, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds. The data is reported to 11 server-class (16-core, 16GB of RAM) computers, and the data is stored on a 24-core, 64GB SQL server. The 'mini internet' has content servers, DNS servers, and network emulators (to model various different latencies, throughputs, packet loss)."
Why not just use the real internet?
Beaten by Chrome and Firefox.
until they add some zombied computers and malware control servers.
oh, wait.. these are windows test systems. never mind. some kind soul probably already added them
I couldn't resist. But with all the work and effort and resources going into this, how is it that operations a tiny fraction of this can generate fast, reliable and standards complaint browsers better than MSIE?
Microsoft, the problem isn't that you're not spending enough money. It's that you're not doing it right.
It means that each millisecond of ping is divided into over 9000 parts.
Granularity of 100 nanoseconds: What does that mean?
That's as small as they could get the bits, pounding on them with Steve's chair.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And still unable to correctly implement CSS2 and HTML4
Fixed that for ya.
Whatever the result I hope microsoft do well that in turn will push competitors and we the users should hopefully benefit. Though I feel IE has a long way to go..
the building windows 8 blogs are actually pretty good, as long as you know that it's going to be pumping up how cool windows 8 will be, and question what is in the cool-aid you are drinking, it's worth a read now and then. They give background information on decisions they are making and why some things are the way they are as well as where they plan to take them.
Wasn't this a plot-point in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series? Having an artificial universe on-site so they could go exploring but still be able to come back for long lunches...
Correctly according to whom? Neither CSS3 nor HTML5 are completed standards and various portions remain in flux. Of the more mature bits IE9 and IE10 implement quite a bit of it and do so quite comprehensively.
MS is also one of very few organizations that is very actively involved with the W3C Test Suite by submitting test cases for each portion of the standard under various circumstances to demonstrate correct behaviors. What Google and Mozilla do instead is slap together a partial implementation and call it a day. More than once has their implementations been found to be not only incomplete but also incorrect.
Stop relying on scores given by non-authoritative tests demonstrating exceedingly limited and selective interpretations of non-standardized functionality. Oh, and HTML5 Video does NOT specify a codec, in fact it was designed to handle many simultaneous codecs, including h.264, which is explicitly referenced in the draft.
no no... those are what COMPILE the results...
They have a wide range of high end to low end PCs running the tests down to a 1.6ghz netbook with a Atom N270 processor.
Does that mean they have only porn sites with midget porn? And a mini 4chan, populated with toddlers?
What we really need is another Bitcoin story!
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Well, sometimes blaming tools is an excuse, other times you have no choice but to speak up and say, this isn't a pool stick, its a baseball bat.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Oh come on... Now that Microsoft has been pushed to #2 with Apple #1 we have to start liking Microsoft and Hating Apple. As the only true measure of intelligence is hating what is popular and mainstream.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It means the runtime data they have collected is stored in a 100ns interval.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I was just going to comment on the abundance of nuclear-related stories that have been running on /. of late - and I'm a nuclear supporter. I wouldn't be complaining though, just making an observation.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
While slashdot mocks the computer industry marketing for describing computers using a single metric, you seem to be quite happy with that when it comes to browser performance.
An example: Chrome (v8 engine) has this reputation for amazing speed, but IE9 absolutely grinds Chrome into the dust when it comes to simply repositioning elements on screen; something which today's web apps spend a lot of their time doing. You can feel it too if you know what you're looking for. I don't follow IEs development as closely as Chrome or Firefox, but IE must be hardware accelerating these translations.
I fully expect Google to focus on performance cases which help their specific apps. Again, a conflict of interest, akin to Microsoft pre-caching masses of junk, so that Office can appear to start up much faster than the competition.
MSDN blogs are often very technically detailed, written by people who know this stuff from the inside, and if it's about a topic that's of general computing interest then it seems that's a good thing. And the blog in question is chock full of some really good detailed stuff about how they're doing performance testing, reasons why the lab is architected the way it is, detailed graphics on how they measure performance, how they analyze it...on and on.
Frankly, this seems more akin to old Slashdot than a lot of the nonsense we see here today. (That story the other day about a girl sent home from school because her lunch wasn't healthy, and then quickly called into question over what happened? Really? What was that topic even doing on Slashdot in the first place?) Whatever you think about Microsoft, having this extremely detailed look into how one of the world's biggest software vendors (or are they the biggest now?) goes about performance testing, and how they ensure consistent results, should be really, really interesting to anyone involved in IT.
IE is crap, but not for that reason. IE9 is missing some very-nice-to-have bits of HTML5 just because it was released so long ago.
As for CSS3, yes it's deficient in some areas, but there is a trick to get around many of them: SVG
Unless you have to support IE8 (LOL poor you), then the users will never notice the smoke and mirrors.
With JavaScript polyfills, it's possible to take advantage of the latest and greatest in IE9 with minimal effort.
No, it means that Windows has a 100ns granularity on it's timestamps.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724284(v=vs.85).aspx
the real internet has virusez ;)
Um, no. Standards word when the standardization committee defines the behaviors, argues through the issues and then rubber stamps the behavior. They don't just take the accidental similarities in draft implementation between Google and Mozilla and standardize "do whatever they did." CSS2 is final and Chrome doesn't implement all of it; just see what happens if you try to combine the first-line selector with a text-transform of lowercase. Conversely there are behaviors which all of the browsers have more or less agreed upon but which are entirely non-standard, like window.screenX.
You're holding it wrong.