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Mozilla Enables WebRender By Default On Firefox Nightly
RoccamOccam writes: WebRender, an experimental GPU-based renderer for web content, written in Rust, is now enabled by default for Firefox Nightly users on desktop Windows 10 with Nvidia GPUs. The announcement was made on the mailing list.
Lin Clark provides an excellent overview of WebRender and, states, "with WebRender, we want apps to run at a silky smooth 60 frames per second (FPS) or better no matter how big the display is or how much of the page is changing from frame to frame. And it works. Pages that chug along at 15 FPS in Chrome or today's Firefox run at 60 FPS with WebRender.
In describing the WebRender approach Clark, asks, "what if we removed this boundary between painting and compositing and just went back to painting every pixel on every frame? This may sound like a ridiculous idea, but it actually has some precedent. Modern day video games repaint every pixel, and they maintain 60 frames per second more reliably than browsers do. And they do it in an unexpected way instead of creating these invalidation rectangles and layers to minimize what they need to paint, they just repaint the whole screen."
Lin Clark provides an excellent overview of WebRender and, states, "with WebRender, we want apps to run at a silky smooth 60 frames per second (FPS) or better no matter how big the display is or how much of the page is changing from frame to frame. And it works. Pages that chug along at 15 FPS in Chrome or today's Firefox run at 60 FPS with WebRender.
In describing the WebRender approach Clark, asks, "what if we removed this boundary between painting and compositing and just went back to painting every pixel on every frame? This may sound like a ridiculous idea, but it actually has some precedent. Modern day video games repaint every pixel, and they maintain 60 frames per second more reliably than browsers do. And they do it in an unexpected way instead of creating these invalidation rectangles and layers to minimize what they need to paint, they just repaint the whole screen."
âoeThis site requires an nVidia 2080Ti or better." - the new york times soon probably
There is no data. There is only XUL!
Only LUDDITES use WebRender. Modern app appers use AppApper!
Apps!
What are the security implications of letting web sites run arbitrary code on your GPU?
I bet they're more significant than you're expecting.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi...
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/st...
It's not your computer.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Quite the opposite. If there is no invalidated states on the screen, no painting occurs. It only paints when it needs to. It actually consumes less power overall because of the amount of code that is required to handle invalidation of only parts of the screen is massively slow. This is why the browser renders so much faster. Instead of 200ms per paint of a small section of the screen, it renders the entire screen in 15ms. The rest of the time, your CPU/GPU sits idle. Also, Webrender does all rendering on the GPU instead of CPU, so it has better optimization for painting the scene (CPUs suck at this entirely)
Imagine how wonderful /. will look!
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Apping apps to the app so you can app the app!
Okay, now that THAT'S out of the way, looks okay, but I think Randall should sue.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
If you're on a laptop with an nvidia gpu, usually the gpu is powered down and the integrated gpu is running everything, saving power.
Now when Firefox is open, your nvidia gpu needs to stay powered up the whole time.
I'd like to get a Beowulf Cluster of these!
Any plans to target 120 Hz?
No, it mostly means that drawing finishes faster and the chips go idle quicker.
Ezekiel 23:20
if you took out all the damn javascript!
Lin Clark provides an excellent overview of WebRender and, states, "with WebRender...."
I have no idea why I typed all of those commas.
Continuously animate one single pixel on the screen and your assumptions break, the GPU will never be idle. Don't get me wrong, I like this a lot, but power efficiency is definitely not a reason. But it isn't a complete power hog either. Compared to 3D games, shaders will be trivial. No matrix multiplies for example and no perspective divides. The fan on the GPU should stay off, and even the lamest integrated GPU should be able to handle it easily.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I've never seen a laptop with a discreet board that did not allow you to change which video card applications used, usually in performance settings. If you wanted Firefox to not use the nvidia card you could just set it to static powersaving mode. 10 google seconds gave me this example: https://support.serato.com/hc/...
CPUs suck at this, in much the same way that decathletes suck at high jump.
The only event that your GPU really loves is the marathon. Marathon anything—so long as it demands less cognitive agility than a biathlon.
Efficient frontier
So put that universal boner tingle back in your pants—everything in life is a tradeoff, if you so much as back the lens 1 mm away.
Why do I suspect those numbers predate the 1950X Threadripper (which would tear your GPUs arms off in the hexakaidecathalon).
I really don't think the word "sucks" should be applied to an elite athlete with 4% body fat who runs for a living, just because his pipes are too studly to ace the ultramarathon.
Theory and practice are not the same though. Check the actual docs and videos on webrender. The DOM + Compositing process currently used to re-render a single pixel is more expensive than cutting out that entire code path and rendering the entire scene. If you're only thinking of the final piece of pushing the actual pixel to the screen, that's the quickest part of the entire process. Figuring out what value that pixel should have in the first place is where all the CPU time is currently being consumed. That's the whole reason they're doing this the way they are.
Firefox is my main browser for a lot of reasons, not just that Google doesn't dominate it. Great to see the Mozilla team leading the way on this, and it's a big validation for Rust. Any serious systems programmer ought to take a close look methinks.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Don't program for a web browser.
Or stop people from filling up their sites with bullshit JS and media.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Wakeywakey.
Firefox is not adding back XUL. Google doesn't use it. All web browser just copy that now.
But the reason I wake you is that Waterfox will let you use XUL addons if you didnt know about it.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Theory and practice are not the same though. Check the actual docs and videos on webrender. The DOM + Compositing process currently used to re-render a single pixel is more expensive than cutting out that entire code path and rendering the entire scene. If you're only thinking of the final piece of pushing the actual pixel to the screen, that's the quickest part of the entire process. Figuring out what value that pixel should have in the first place is where all the CPU time is currently being consumed. That's the whole reason they're doing this the way they are.
Check the actual docs and videos on webrender. The DOM + Compositing process currently used to re-render a single pixel is more expensive than cutting out that entire code path and rendering the entire scene.
The actual docs say the opposite. "The optimizations above have helped pages render faster in certain cases. When not much is changing on a page—for example, when there’s just a single blinking cursor—the browser will do the least amount of work possible."
This is practice, not theory. Again, don't get me wrong, I like this a lot, but for some cases it will eat a lot more battery than incremental render. Whether that is a problem in practice remains to be seen. My guess: not a problem even on handsets, and perceptibly smoother browsing. I'll take it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
And if you continued reading beyond that line of text, it explains why that worked in the early days of browsers, but doesn't work in modern browsers due to increased complexity of web pages.
Could you quote some text please.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Didn't miss it. Z-culling will improve the blinking cursor case, but not fix it completely. Again, note: I like this, but let's not attribute magical powers to the technique that aren't there.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Sure thing, buddy.
There you go.
#DeleteFacebook
This Firefox feature only works on nvidia GPUs, as stated in the summary. How many CPUs have integrated nvidia GPUs?
If you want Firefox to not use the discrete GPU, you can't use WebRender.
I hope this is just an example rather than a measured result, because that would be drawing massive power.
Why would it be drawing massive power? This is leveraging the GPU to do things it does well instead of putting them on the CPU that does them poorly.
This is why the browser renders so much faster. Instead of 200ms per paint of a small section of the screen, it renders the entire screen in 15ms. The rest of the time, your CPU/GPU sits idle. Also, Webrender does all rendering on the GPU instead of CPU, so it has better optimization for painting the scene (CPUs suck at this entirely)
How does this work when the browser and GPU are on diifferent machines? I run my browser in remote X. Will that be tonnes slower when it transfers entire renderings over the network?
(Never mind that "modern Xorg programmers" already killed LBX because they did not use it themselves so didn't see a need.)
Check right now. How goes GPU compositing work with your current setup? I bet it doesn't, honestly. So you'd still be stuck in the classic software rendering that you currently already have.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
If you saw me you would compare me to a polar bear, not someone from Africa.
#DeleteFacebook
It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
This is extremely old news. It would be interesting to know if that tech has been enabled for more than Win10 and Nvidia GPUs by now.
Check right now. How goes GPU compositing work with your current setup? I bet it doesn't, honestly. So you'd still be stuck in the classic software rendering that you currently already have.
Yes, but at least it only sends over the rectangles that change, and doesn't redraw the entire window. While X is no longer as frugal as when it had the LBX extension, it still handles partial updates. If I understand this correctly, they want to do away with that entirely and always update the entire viewport.
The removal of XUL from Firefox means I lost add ons that there are no viable replacements for.
Classic Theme Restorer, Download Status Bar, and another one do not work with FF57+ and there are no replacements for them.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.