Using Android as an example, this is a good indication of how open the term performance is in that space:
http://developer.android.com/training/best-performance.html If avoiding confusion is your goal, I'd suggest avoiding using performance as a synonym for fps. 'fps' seems like a pretty good term to use for 'fps' ;) As ever, just a suggestion. I'll leave it at that so we can get back to the real issues. On 29/05/2013, at 4:17 PM, Richard Bair <[email protected]> wrote: > > On May 28, 2013, at 9:43 PM, Daniel Zwolenski <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> Lets use performance to mean fps, and choppiness to mean inconsistent >>> framerate. I think being consistent will help keep track of which issues >>> are affecting which manifestation of "visual crappiness" :-) >> >> I agree with having clear terminology. On that fromt performance to me (and >> to many from the looks of thread) is more wholistic than fps. It's 'how the >> system performs'. >> >> I have no idea whether the problems I'm seeing are framerate related or what >> - that's plumbing knowledge I dont have. I can't classify it any further >> than a general term - 'performance problems', 'rendering problems' or >> 'visual problems' - whatever term you want but we need some grouping of >> these. >> >> Things like 'fps', 'inconsistent framerate' are the causes, not the symptoms. > > Actually I would disagree with that, these are the symptoms not the problems. > The problems will be things like overly-long held synchronization that causes > a frame to be skipped or a bad system timer that calls us at inconsistent > times or excessive text measurement leading to long layout times etc. The > manifestations of these individual issues would be poor fps (throughput) or > inconsistent fps (which in some cases may be because a single frame is doing > way more work than needed -- perhaps a bug in the application or the control). > >> We're reporting the symptoms to you so you can determine the causes. So >> these will be along the lines of 'the animation is jittery', 'the fonts are >> blurry', 'when I scroll a big image there is lag'. > > Blurry fonts wouldn't be a performance issue according to any definition, but > rather a quality issue. > >> I'd vote we either not use 'performance', or use it to mean a general >> wholistic measure of how the system performs from the users perspective. I'd >> definitely vote we don't use it to mean any one specific metric like fps as >> I don't think that's how the vast majority are going to read it. > > I guess I've used fps & performance synonymously forever. Performance to me > is "how fast is the thing". If I can consistently measure the work being done > as being under 16ms then I've got good performance. Even if it stutters (that > would be a different problem -- smoothness). Android uses the term "Jank" for > Jitter / Stutter / choppiness. I don't like the term myself but it seems > fairly common to separate out performance from jitter. > > Richard
