Hi Patrick, I don’t have any comprehensive data to back this up. It’s unfortunately more anecdotal with the major observations being that (1) Chrome uses CPU rendering and it mostly seems “fast enough” for normal web content (not discussing webgl/vr/canvas here) and (2) we get lots of stability problems due to GPU drivers so being a bit slower in exchange for stability might be the route to go. What kind of evidence are you seeing so far? I agree, it’d be much nicer to have comprehensive data to verify this.
Thanks, Mason > On Mar 22, 2016, at 12:06 PM, Patrick Walton <pwal...@mozilla.com> wrote: > > Thanks for the info! This is very interesting to us in Servo. > > Do you have any performance measurements that support the statement "While it > would be nice to use the GPU, we’re not totally confident that using the GPU > to render content is quite worth it."? We have evidence on our side to > support this too (and in fact it's one of the motivations for WebRender), but > it's be great to have comprehensive data to back it up. > > Patrick > > On Mar 22, 2016 10:56 AM, "Mason Chang" <mch...@mozilla.com > <mailto:mch...@mozilla.com>> wrote: > Hi David, > > The main benefit is architectural with a huge simplification of our graphics > code, with a nice side benefit of performance. As it stands today, we have > multiple different rendering paths for each platform (Linux, OS X, Windows). > That means every time we hit a graphics bug, we have to know three APIs that > render just slightly different and we have to dig through each backend to > figure out what’s going on. These all have slightly different performance > characteristics as well, which takes some time. We don’t generally get a lot > of benefit from having a distinct backend for platform also because other > than on Windows, we’re not using the GPU for content rendering. This > essentially means we’re spinning a lot of wheels and cost on small fixes on > non-windows platforms for little benefit. [1]. This is especially true when > you consider that we have special backends for both Linux and OS X which make > up 2.6% of our user base. > > With Skia, we can unify all of our graphics pipeline across all platforms > other than Windows for content rendering. It uses CPU rendering and because > of that, fixes on one platform translate much better across other platforms > that use Skia. While it would be nice to use the GPU, we’re not totally > confident that using the GPU to render content is quite worth it. It’s also > quite nice that micro-level optimizations at the backend level can mostly be > done for us as Skia is optimizing performance with Chrome as one of their use > cases. e.g., on Mac, scaling content on the CPU was 2-3x faster with Skia > versus CG. > > Overall, it’s mostly a clean up operation so we spend less time fixing each > individual platform. > > Please let me know if you have any more questions. > > Thanks, > Mason > > [1] https://people.mozilla.org/~danderson/moz-gfx-telemetry/www/ > <https://people.mozilla.org/~danderson/moz-gfx-telemetry/www/> > > > On Mar 22, 2016, at 8:21 AM, Mike de Boer <mdeb...@mozilla.com > > <mailto:mdeb...@mozilla.com>> wrote: > > > > I was also quite curious, so I started clicking up the hierarchy of that > > bug and ended up at: > > > > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1154825#c1 > > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1154825#c1> > > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1154825#c1 > > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1154825#c1>> > > > > (comment 2 is also useful info) > > > > Ultimate goal: no more checkerboarding in APZ. But Mason is the authority > > here, methinks :-) > > > > Cheers, > > > > Mike. > > > >> On 22 Mar 2016, at 15:45, David Rajchenbach-Teller <dtel...@mozilla.com > >> <mailto:dtel...@mozilla.com>> wrote: > >> > >> Out of curiosity, what's the benefit? > >> > >> On 22/03/16 15:44, Mason Chang wrote: > >>> Hi all, > >>> > >>> We're changing the default graphics backend on OS X from CoreGraphics to > >>> Skia. In the best case, you should notice no difference. > >>> > >>> If you see any graphics artifacts on mac, please file a bug and make it > >>> block bug 1207332 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207332 > >>> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207332>>. > >>> You can verify that the artifact you're seeing is due to the switch by > >>> going to about:config, set the preference "gfx.content.azure.backends" to > >>> "cg", restarting Firefox and seeing if the artifact still appears. > >>> > >>> Thanks to Lee Salzman, Jeff Muizelaar, and Markus Stange for their > >>> tremendous efforts in getting this accomplished. > >>> > >>> Thanks, > >>> Mason > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> dev-platform mailing list > >>> dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org <mailto:dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org> > >>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > >>> <https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform> > >>> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> dev-platform mailing list > >> dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org <mailto:dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org> > >> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > >> <https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > dev-platform mailing list > > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org <mailto:dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org> > > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > > <https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform> > > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org <mailto:dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > <https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform> _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
