Microsoft isn't the only one developing a hardware-accelerated browser
Summary: Microsoft, with IE 9, isn't the only browser provider planning to harness hardware acceleration. Mozilla is planning to do the same with Firefox. Firefox developers have posted a prototype demonstrating the ability to take advantage of Direct2D and DirectWrite. Google is interested in the possibilities of hardware-accelerating Chrome, as well, as News.com's Stephen Shankland notes.
Microsoft has shared very few details so far about Internet Explorer (IE) 9, but has said the company is planning to accelerate the performance of text and graphics rendering by taking advantage of the power of PCs' graphics-processing unit (GPU).
Specifically, Microsoft officials said at the Professional Developers Conference last week that with IE9, it will be "moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU (and GDI) to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite." (Istartedsomething blogger Long Zheng posted a good write up on Microsoft's hardware-acceleration plans for IE 9 last week, if you want more details.)
But as News.com reported on November 24, Microsoft isn't the only browser provider planning to harness hardware acceleration. Mozilla is planning to do the same with Firefox. Firefox developers have posted a prototype demonstrating the ability to take advantage of Direct2D and DirectWrite. Google is interested in the possibilities of hardware-accelerating Chrome, as well, as News.com's Stephen Shankland notes. Unsurprisingly, the Chrome team is keeping any plans, concrete or otherwise, close to the vest.
The Mozilla folks already are claiming they believe they'll be first to deliver a hardware-accelerated browser. I'd bet they're right. Microsoft officials aren't saying when to expect a test or final version of IE 9. But if the IE team stays on the same trajectory that it followed with IE 8, I'd bet the earliest we'll see a final version of IE9 is spring 2011. (My calculation? I'm betting Windows 8 will be released in summer/fall 2011, two years after Windows 7 was released to market, and that IE 9 -- the version of the browser that will be part of Windows 8, will hit a few months earlier.)
Besides being unwilling to share dates, the Microsoft folks also are not yet talking about which versions of Windows they plan to support with IE 9. Will Microsoft still support XP machines with the next version of IE? There's no word. My guess is IE 9 won't work on XP. And based on the less-than-optimal way IE 8 runs on lower-memory XP machines, I'd say XP users might want to steer clear of it if it does run.
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Talkback
It is a dumb idea.
What a brilliant idea!
I smell a large scale patent war brewing
I'd bet that Office goes hardware-rendered, too
Office could use GPU rendering
Probably Right
Shorter release cycle?
Now exactly what is this going to do?
And FF is going to use DirectX? So they are going to depend on their competitor for their solution? And just how do they plan to port this to Linux? I would think they would be looking at OpenGL instead.
Now that I think about it...should this really be all that difficult to do?
A few points...
going to be accelerated... Does it need it?
"</i>
Yes. With the current speed gains in
JavaScript, other parts of rendering a complete
page emerge as the new bottlenecks. Layout
calculations and rendering of graphics and text
is taking up a bigger share of the total
request-to-screen time. Hardware rendering
addresses text and graphics.
But it is not just that. MS will be using sub-
pixel positioning, i.e. they will honor
floating point values for positions (already
part of the CSS standard). They will do so by
leveraging sub-pixel rendering (cleartype).
While this will deliver the page to the screen
faster, the application where these
improvements will be most visible is in
animations, e.g. when positioning or scaling
text/images in small (sub-pixel) increments. It
will produce a much smoother effect, partly
because of higher FPS rate and partly because
of sub-pixel positioning will not "clip"
characters to truncated/rounded pixel
positions.
<i>"And FF is going to use DirectX?"</i>
Maybe - Mozilla has stated that they will use
OpenGL and use some kind of abstraction layer
on Windows. But perhaps they will need to use
DirectX for sub-pixel positioning if they are
going to support that. Don't know if it is
supported on other platforms.
<i>"So they [Mozilla] are going to depend on
their competitor for their solution?"</i>
Gee, Mozilla depends on a competitor for
frigging <b>funding</b>. 95% of Mozilla
Foundations funding comes from Google. Using a
platform API on a specific platform can hardly
be any worse than that, can it?
<i>"And just how do they plan to port this to
Linux? I would think they would be looking at
OpenGL instead."</i>
Yes.
Interesting...
I'd look at Mozilla/Google the other way around. Google funds Mozilla because they don't want to be dependent on THEIR competitor (MS) to be the gateway to their internet services. For whatever reason they up and decided to make their own browser instead of trying to work their technical ideas into Mozilla. Then again many may have considered that strong arming if the funding ratio you give is true. So it looks to me like they introduced some competition to steer everyone in certain directions.
Oh and to clarify...depending on DirectX is not a slight at MS. IMO MS is always going to produce a better product on top of DirectX than their competitor. You'd be a fool to compete outside of the gaming world (where they need the broad number of titles) to go head to head with a browser built on DirectX.
To see the difference in rendering
Surfing-on-the-GPU-with-D2D/
The interesting section about text
rendering/GPU/sub-pixel positioning starts at
about 2:30.
The smoother experience is clearly visible even
in a video like this.
I don't know how smooth this would look on
other browsers in current versions, but there
is no question about the jump in quality this
will mean for Internet Explorer.
Where do you think your browser spends most of it's cycles today?
This is true regardless of which browser you use:
Most sites today use relatively little Javascript. Of those sites that do use a lot of javascript, only a small fraction use highly complex javascript that will allow todays' fastest javascript engines to shine. Of those sites that do use lots of complex javascript, few implement a significant portion of their site's pages using complex javascript.
Nobody will disagree that MS need to improve IE's javascript engine's performance in order to better handle increasingly sophisticated sites. However, even if MS made their javascripe engine the fastest in the world, the web wouldn't suddenly become lightening-fast.
Because most sites out there today (and for the foreseeable future) are relatively static and require (relatively) significant time to layout and render, MS will most likely be able to deliver FAR more noticeable performance improvements should they be able to significantly improve IE's layout and rendering perf.
Thus, if they can offload all text and graphics rendering along with some layout calculations to the GPU, freeing the CPU to focus on layout and compositing, then IE's performance will feel MUCH more noticeably faster.
Combined with some key perf improvements in IE's javascript engine, IE9 could well turn out to be the browser to beat!
OS Bloat?
Each successive rendition of Windows has historically been bigger and slower than its predecessor. The trend has continued geometrically.
One of the original concepts of Windows was to provide a hardware-independent, vendor-independent universal interface to the capabilities of the any Windows system.
Unfortunately, the Windows internal interface became so cumbersome and slow that it was intolerable - and in response, DirectX was developed as a bypass. High-performance gaming couldn't "wait around" for Windows to churn out a Device Context, when the dedicated GPU was available to do the same function much faster. There was already a high-performance DOS interface, (a la DOOM and Wolfenstein) and Windows had to keep up.
Now it seems that the problem has spread down from the high-performance 3D rendering, into the moderate-performance 2D rendering - apparently necessitating Direct2D.
To mis-quote Sonny and Cher's song, "And the BLOAT goes on..."
;-)
That analysis isn't even over simplified...
the argument between bloat and feature is a
valid one, MS always just relied Intel would
come out with faster chips to allow for more
features they add. I prefer those feature, and
so do you, otherwise you'd be using 1.0. "oh
but software doesn't run, wa wa wa" thats
because it's missing the required BLOAT! Duh!
Yes DirectX was bought and developed to allow
direct(er) access to the hardware, primarily
the GPU. That is NEVER what windows was meant
to do. Ever try and program for DirectX? There
is a reason people still use the GDI. And even
if/when they accelerate the GDI it still won't
be as fast as going strait to the hardware
cause it just provides yet another abstraction
layer.
DOS didn't have a "high-performance interface"
it just didn't use much memory and allowed
access to the hardware. Ever try and program an
optimized 3d engine for DOS? Yea John Carmack
is a GENIUS!
The "problem" or I would say "industry
challenge" is the every increasing demand we
place on the industry for better...ness. We
want better graphics, we want better CPUs we
want better interfaces, we want better storage,
we want better software, we want better
security. And THEN we complain about BLOAT!
Go live in a cave, there you can complain about
your bloated fire as you swing your bloated
club.
Just a quick question
question.
They will use OpenGL; not OpenCL
correct.
(OpenCL is about using the GPU for something
*other* than graphics)
What, like layout calculations?
It's quite likely that (perhaps over time) the browser vendors will start offloading some/much of the page layout AND rendering to the GPU, freeing the CPU to get on with more useful work.
It'll be fascinating to see how each of the vendors will approach this brave new world! ;)
This is what I was wondering.
directcompute. Would not the browser makers want to tap into that
ability?
Absolutely
Your GPU is currently a processor that has been highly optimized for certain workloads - primarily performing vector & matrix math against large bodies of data.
However, with the introduction of things like Intel's 'Larrabee' GPU, the distinction between the cores on your GPU and the cores in your CPU will definitely blur.
'Larrabee' essentially houses 32+ P5 class x86/x64 cores (yes, thirty two cores!) which have been enhanced with additional vector/matrix math circuitry to perform traditional GPU operations very efficiently, but are also able to execute traditional x86/x64 code just like your CPU!
Using technologies like DirectCompute/OpenCL, and future OS architectures, apps and OS' in the future will be able to offload large amounts of code to one/some/all of the available processor cores, depending on the cores' capabilities.
18 months from now, Intel will be releasing their next generation CPU with 8 cores supporting 16 simultaneous threads. Along with a 32-core Larrabee 'GPU' able to execute 256 simultaneous threads, PC's will be capable of an astronomical amount of work per clock tick ... so long as app vendors start building apps that can be smoothly scaled across available processing units.
When this happens, the world of personal computing as we know it will change beyond all recognition!
Are browsers slow? I can't tell.
It is about smoother animations
for a *much* smoother experience when changing
text/graphics in small increments.
Higher FPS rates and triple resolution (MS
cleartype is about subtype rendering/positioning
which triples the horizontal resolution).