Graphics Team ships WebRender MVP (opens in new tab)

(mozillagfx.wordpress.com)

139 pointsjandem6y ago50 comments

50 comments

This is an amazing achievement for the WebRender team, but users should manage their expectations with regard to performance improvements.

The reality is that Firefox's current rendering engine is highly tuned, and switching to a new engine without major performance regressions is impressive. Keep in mind, there may be performance improvements coming down the line.

sambe6y ago

Shipping for Linux is waaay down the list:

https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1

I assume due to driver issues?

maggit6y ago

As a desktop Linux user, I'd guess it's harder to make it work right (because of, among other things, driver issues) and it affects a smaller portion of the user base of Firefox. Oh well.

Fortunately it's easy to opt in to, and in my experience works well on an oldish Intel chip.

Unfortunately, it fails hard with Wayland, putting no pixels on the screen. (In my experience) But I'm using it happily through XWayland.

yoasif_6y ago

> Unfortunately, it fails hard with Wayland, putting no pixels on the screen. (In my experience)

It works for me in nightly, at least. Have you tried there?

2 more replies

ubercow136y ago

I tried it for a while and it worked fine but I did notice that it significantly increased idle CPU load, enough to affect battery life

muizelaar6y ago

FWIW, WebRender is enabled by default on Nightly on Linux with a subset of modern Intel hardware.

chronogram6y ago

Seeing as Linux Firefox still doesn’t use any hardware acceleration, it’s probably because there’s no developer room for it.

dx876y ago

It doesn't use it by default, but you can manually enable it. It's the only way I could watch twitch streams on a 1440p monitor at 60 FPS.

olau6y ago

There are plenty of developers using Linux, though. Time for someone to jump in?

7816y ago

Not only. There's Ubuntu Linux/Fedora Linux/Arch Linux, there's Wayland and a whole slew of compositors...

Lorkki6y ago

As always, the solution would be to not attempt to support "Linux", but to pick one distribution (or a manageable set) to support officially.

eikenberry6y ago

Distro shouldn't matter one bit. Just scan for hardware acceleration support and enable it if found. Plenty of other applications do this without any per-distro changes.

pier256y ago

So Windows 10 + Nvidia GPU is only 4%? Huh. I would have thought this demographic would be larger.

I guess most users are on laptops where integrated Intel GPUs are more common.

noir_lord6y ago

I'm sorta in that 4%, I have an RTX2080 I use for gaming on my home desktop but I'm only in Win10 for gaming.

Hopefully I'll be able to use the RTX with Firefox and Fedora down the line though (stably).

k_bx6y ago

Tremendous effort on a very complicated piece of software. I wish Firefox would also catch up on less complicated but needed so greatly features which are present in other browsers, like filling out credit card info and autocomplete=email input fields autocompletion.

sambe6y ago

It's being rolled out:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features/Form_Autofill#Chil...

jerheinze6y ago

The article forgot to mention the important fact that it's written in Rust!

Cynddl6y ago

Naive question: why is it important, compared to the developed features and new architecture?

mkl6y ago

WebRender has come out of Mozilla's Servo browser engine project, which has had influence on the development of Rust itself. The language and the browser engine have been developed together, so this and other parts of the Quantum project [1] (mostly bringing parts of Servo into Firefox) are like the culmination of all this work, and a validation of the language.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum

oregontechninja6y ago

Because development of this particular project has been a large driving force of Mozilla's interaction with Rust.

pygy_6y ago

    <rust-evangelism-strike-force>
        FEARLESS CONCURRENCY
    </rust-evangelism-strike-force>

Rust makes it easier to write bug-free concurrent code. Webrender relies on this and I'm not sure Mozilla could have pulled it out in C++ in the same time frame, if at all.

1 more reply

jerheinze6y ago

Since Rust is a memory safe language with nearly the same performance as C

1 more reply

amelius6y ago

Can Rust target the GPU?

steveklabnik6y ago

Sort of; it's not trivial, but some people have done it. See https://bheisler.github.io/post/rust-on-the-gpu-with-accel/ for example. I think https://blog.theincredibleholk.org/blog/2012/12/05/compiling... is the earliest one I know of; two and a half years before Rust 1.0!

xvilka6y ago

Hopefully they will rewrite the rest of Firefox in Rust as soon as possible.

inDigiNeous6y ago

... That is an gargantuan task. According to https://www.openhub.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_... they have over 5.5 million lines of code written in C++.

That is an insane amount of code that would need to be rewritten, rechecked, retested and so on. Not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

SketchySeaBeast6y ago

I'm confused as to why someone would even want them to change the codebase - is this just an example of the "newer is better" problem we have here in tech? Is there something glaringly obvious about Rust that would make the effort worthwhile?

4 more replies

alimbada6y ago

But how much of that is the existing compositor, renderer or other components (that have been or will be replaced by Firefox Quantum components) and eventually be deprecated and removed?

ncmncm6y ago

Here's hoping it is easy to switch off. Firefox has become extremely crashy, running under Qubes, where the GPU is forbidden, despite my turning off attempts at shader use everywhere I can find. E.g., even turning off "smooth scrolling" made a substantial difference. But it still crashes, even just loading a DDG search results page.

Advice welcome. (No, abandoning Qubes is not an option.)

yoasif_6y ago

Mozregression - https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ should help you figure out where it broke. You can open a bug with the commit you found as "regressed by" - https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/UserGuide/BugFields#regressed_b... to help developers track down how what they need to change to resolve the issue.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

50 comments

gregwtmtno6y ago

This is an amazing achievement for the WebRender team, but users should manage their expectations with regard to performance improvements.

sambe6y ago

Shipping for Linux is waaay down the list:

https://github.com/orgs/FirefoxGraphics/projects/1

I assume due to driver issues?

maggit6y ago

As a desktop Linux user, I'd guess it's harder to make it work right (because of, among other things, driver issues) and it affects a smaller portion of the user base of Firefox. Oh well.

Fortunately it's easy to opt in to, and in my experience works well on an oldish Intel chip.

Unfortunately, it fails hard with Wayland, putting no pixels on the screen. (In my experience) But I'm using it happily through XWayland.

yoasif_6y ago

> Unfortunately, it fails hard with Wayland, putting no pixels on the screen. (In my experience)

It works for me in nightly, at least. Have you tried there?

2 more replies

ubercow136y ago

I tried it for a while and it worked fine but I did notice that it significantly increased idle CPU load, enough to affect battery life

muizelaar6y ago

FWIW, WebRender is enabled by default on Nightly on Linux with a subset of modern Intel hardware.

chronogram6y ago

Seeing as Linux Firefox still doesn’t use any hardware acceleration, it’s probably because there’s no developer room for it.

dx876y ago

It doesn't use it by default, but you can manually enable it. It's the only way I could watch twitch streams on a 1440p monitor at 60 FPS.

olau6y ago

There are plenty of developers using Linux, though. Time for someone to jump in?

7816y ago

Not only. There's Ubuntu Linux/Fedora Linux/Arch Linux, there's Wayland and a whole slew of compositors...

Lorkki6y ago

As always, the solution would be to not attempt to support "Linux", but to pick one distribution (or a manageable set) to support officially.

eikenberry6y ago

Distro shouldn't matter one bit. Just scan for hardware acceleration support and enable it if found. Plenty of other applications do this without any per-distro changes.

pier256y ago

So Windows 10 + Nvidia GPU is only 4%? Huh. I would have thought this demographic would be larger.

I guess most users are on laptops where integrated Intel GPUs are more common.

noir_lord6y ago

I'm sorta in that 4%, I have an RTX2080 I use for gaming on my home desktop but I'm only in Win10 for gaming.

Hopefully I'll be able to use the RTX with Firefox and Fedora down the line though (stably).

k_bx6y ago

sambe6y ago

It's being rolled out:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features/Form_Autofill#Chil...

jerheinze6y ago

The article forgot to mention the important fact that it's written in Rust!

Cynddl6y ago

Naive question: why is it important, compared to the developed features and new architecture?

mkl6y ago

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum

oregontechninja6y ago

Because development of this particular project has been a large driving force of Mozilla's interaction with Rust.

pygy_6y ago

    <rust-evangelism-strike-force>
        FEARLESS CONCURRENCY
    </rust-evangelism-strike-force>

Rust makes it easier to write bug-free concurrent code. Webrender relies on this and I'm not sure Mozilla could have pulled it out in C++ in the same time frame, if at all.

1 more reply

jerheinze6y ago

Since Rust is a memory safe language with nearly the same performance as C

1 more reply

amelius6y ago

Can Rust target the GPU?

steveklabnik6y ago

xvilka6y ago

Hopefully they will rewrite the rest of Firefox in Rust as soon as possible.

inDigiNeous6y ago

... That is an gargantuan task. According to https://www.openhub.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_... they have over 5.5 million lines of code written in C++.

That is an insane amount of code that would need to be rewritten, rechecked, retested and so on. Not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

SketchySeaBeast6y ago

4 more replies

alimbada6y ago

But how much of that is the existing compositor, renderer or other components (that have been or will be replaced by Firefox Quantum components) and eventually be deprecated and removed?

ncmncm6y ago

Advice welcome. (No, abandoning Qubes is not an option.)

yoasif_6y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse