--- On Mon, 11/3/08, Ginn Chen <Ginn.Chen at Sun.COM> wrote:
> From: Ginn Chen <Ginn.Chen at Sun.COM>
> Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] [desktop-discuss] FF3 stability and performance
> concerns
> To: "Alan Coopersmith" <Alan.Coopersmith at Sun.COM>
> Cc: opensolaris-discuss at opensolaris.org, desktop-discuss at
> opensolaris.org, indiana-discuss at opensolaris.org
> Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 11:52 PM
> On Nov 3, 2008, at 11:52 PM, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>
> > Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >> Ian Collins <ian at ianshome.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> That's an odd comment, considering most
> reviews of FF3 I've seen
> >>> commends it for being both faster and leaking
> less memory tan its
> >>> predecessor.
> >>>
> >>> It's certainly been stable long term on my
> desktop since 3.0.3.
> >>>
> >>
> >> What is the last time you used it on Sparc?
> >>
> >> Netscape always was slower on sparc systems then
> on even slower x86
> >> machines.
> >> I would guess that there is strange byte order
> dependent code
> >> inside the
> >> graphics engine.
> >
> > I don't know of any "strange byte order
> dependent code" in the Cairo
> > graphics
> > engine used in current Firefox, but I do know of
> several simpler
> > reasons it's
> > faster on x86 than SPARC:
> >
> > - it makes heavy use of the Render extension if the X
> server
> > supports it.
> > Xorg supports Render on almost all cards, with
> several providing
> > hardware
> > acceleration for it, which helps x86. On SPARC,
> only a few
> > drivers for
> > Xsun were updated to add Render support, and
> it's off by default.
> > For Xorg,
> > unless you've added Martin's drivers, only
> XVR-2500 has a Xorg
> > driver
> > provided so far - and I don't know what level of
> Render
> > acceleration any
> > of those provide.
> >
> > - The pixman backend used for various graphics
> rendering has code
> > for MMX & SSE
> > acceleration, but none for VIS. Given the upstream
> projects'
> > target
> > audience are approximately 99% x86 and 0% SPARC,
> they've
> > concentrated their
> > optimization efforts there.
>
> Currently on Solaris, libpixman in system cairo or Firefox
> doesn't
> build with MMX & SSE
> acceleration, that is something we can improve for x86.
>
> Ginn
>
> >
> >
> > - Virtually any graphics card on a PC of today is
> several
> > generations newer
> > than any SPARC graphics card you've used.
> >
> > --
> > -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith at sun.com
> > Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > desktop-discuss mailing list
> > desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org
>
> --------
> Ginn Chen
> Software Engineer, Browser Team
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.
My concern is moreso on wide adoption and performance of
Firefox 3.0.3/3.1b1 with Solaris 10 and Opensolaris SPARC
and Sunray users.
I don't think adding VIS performance enhancements is the silver
bullet in this case.
~ Ken Mays
