[webkit-dev] setTimeout as browser speed throttle

[David Hyatt]

We encountered 100% CPU spins on amazon.com, orbitz.com, mapquest.com,  
among others (looking through Radar histories).  This was pre-clamp.   
Web sites make this mistake because they don't know any better, and it  
works fine in IE.  It is a mistake these sites will continue to make,  
and Chrome is the only browser that will be susceptible.  Being  
different from IE here is not a good thing.  You will end up having to  
evangelize sites over and over to fix 100% CPU spins that occur only  
in your browser.  Do you really want that kind of headache?

A new API will let Web apps get the performance they need while  
avoiding compatibility problems.

dave

On Sep 29, 2008, at 10:06 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>
> On Sep 29, 2008, at 7:26 PM, Mike Belshe wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> One of the differences between Chrome and Safari is that Chrome  
>> sets the setTimeout clamp to 1ms as opposed to 10ms.  This means  
>> that if the application writer requests a timer of less than 10ms,  
>> Chrome will allow it, whereas Safari will clamp the minimum timeout  
>> to 10ms.  The reason we did this was to minimize browser delays  
>> when running graphical javascript applications.
>>
>> This has been a concern for some, so I wanted to bring it up here  
>> and get an open discussion going.  My hope is to lower or remove  
>> the clamp over time.
>>
>> To demonstrate the benefit, here is one test case which benefits  
>> from removing the setTimeout clamp.  Chrome gets about a ~4x  
>> performance boost by reducing the setTimeout clamp.  This  
>> programming pattern in javascript is very common.
>>
>>    http://www.belshe.com/test/sort/sort.html
>>
>> One counter argument brought up is a claim that all other browsers  
>> use a 10ms clamp, and this might cause incompatibilities.  However,  
>> it turns out that browsers already use widely varying values.
>
> I believe all major browsers (besides Chrome) have a minimum of  
> either 10ms or 15.6ms. I don't think this is "widely varying".
>
>>  We also really haven't seen any incompatibilities due to this  
>> change.  It is true that having a lower clamp can provide an easy  
>> way for web developers to accidentally spin the CPU, and we have  
>> seen one high-profile instance of this.  But of course spinning the  
>> CPU can be done in javascript all by itself :-)
>
> The kinds of problems we are concerned about are of three forms:
>
> 1) Animations that run faster than intended by the author (it's true  
> that 10ms vs 16ms floors will give slight differences in speed, but  
> not nearly as much so as 10ms vs no delay).
>
> 2) Burning CPU and battery on pages where the author did not expect  
> this to happen, and had not seen it on the browsers he or she has  
> tested with.
>
> 3) Possibly slowing things dow if a page is using a 0-delay timer to  
> poll for completion of network activity. The popular JavaScript  
> library jQuery does this to detect when all stylesheets have loaded.  
> Lack of clamping could actually slow down the loading it is intended  
> to wait for.
>
> 4) Future content that is authored in one of Safari or Chrome that  
> depends on timing of 0-delay timers will have different behavior in  
> the other. Thus, we get less compatibility benefit for WebKit-based  
> browsers through cross-testing.
>
> The fact that you say you have seen one high-profile instance  
> doesn't sound to me like there are no incompatibilities. It sounds  
> like there are some, and you have encountered at least one of them.  
> Points 1 and 2 are what made us add the timer minimum in the first  
> place, as documented in WebKit's SVN history and ChangeLogs. We  
> originally did not have one, and added it for compatibility with  
> other browsers.
>
> Currently Chrome gets an advantage on some benchmarks by accepting  
> this compatibility risk. This leads to misleading performance  
> comparisons, in much the same way as firing the "load" event before  
> images are loaded would.
>
>> Here is a summary of the minimum timeout for existing browsers (you  
>> can test your browser with this page: http://www.belshe.com/test/timers.html 
>>  )
>> Safari for the mac:   10ms
>> Safari for windows:    15.6ms
>> Firefox:                   10ms or 15.6ms, depending on whether or  
>> not Flash is running on the system
>> IE :                         15.6ms
>> Chrome:                  1ms (future - remove the clamp?)
>>
>> So here are a couple of options:
>>    1) Remove or lower the clamp so that javascript apps can run  
>> substantially faster.
>>    2) Keep the clamp and let them run slowly :-)
>>
>> Thoughts?  It would be great to see Safari and Chrome use the same  
>> clamping values.
>
> Or there is option 3:
>
> 3) Restore the clamp for setTimeout and setInterval to 10ms for  
> compatibility, and add a new setHighResTimer API that does not have  
> any lower bound.
>
> This would let aware Web applications get the same benefit, but  
> without any of the compatibility risk to legacy Web content. The  
> main argument against doing things this way is that it would add API  
> surface area. But that seems like a small price to pay for removing  
> the compatibility risk, and turning the change into something other  
> browsers would be willing to adopt.
>
> I would like to propose an API along these lines for HTML5 but I  
> would prefer if we can achieve consensus in the WebKit community  
> first.
>
> Regards,
> Maciej
>
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