Talks to Watch

Fastest browser engine by far at 500 FPS! Servo Webrender - CSS on the GPU part 1: Rust

19K views · Feb 23, 2016 · 15:00 · 1 HN recommender · 5 mentions · discussed 2017

An excerpt from a Bay Area Rust meetup on Servo's WebRender, which renders CSS display lists on the GPU at very high frame rates. It explains the approach and demos rendering at around 500 FPS.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters point to it when discussing how WebRender works and as evidence of what GPU-based browser rendering can achieve.

“If you have the time there is a nice talk about WebRender”HN comment, 2017

What Hacker News said 5

RecommendsNiLSPACEApr 2017

“If you have the time there is a nice talk about WebRender”

Talk explaining how WebRender sends pages to the GPU.

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If you have the time there is a nice talk about WebRender: this video Here is another great talk: link At ~25:30 he'll also talk a bit about Quantum. In a nutshell WebRender is used to send a web page to the GPU which will paint all divs, borders, shadows, images etc. Currently WebRender is the only component I'm aware of that is inside Firefox Nightly. It's still behind a config though.

in “Mozilla and Microsoft are rebuilding their browsers’ foundations” · view on HN
Cites itZenoArrowJan 2017

Demo of Servo WebRender rendering at very high frame rates.

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>"If performance is not competitive" I don't think this will be a problem. One example... this video link

in “Transitioning Firefox's rendering engine from Gecko to Servo” · view on HN
Cites itlittlestymaarSep 2017

Example of state of the art GPU rendering tools in Mozilla's new pipeline.

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You should take these advices with a grain of salt because it refers to the legacy rendering pipeline used by current web browers. There is not absolute rule stating that layout and painting must be slow while compositing is not. In fact Mozillians are currently working on a new rendering pipeline[1] based on state of the art rendering tools[2]. This new pipeline should be deployed in firefox in 2018 as a part of the ongoing Quantum project. [1] link [2] this video

Cites ityazaddaruvalaSep 2017

Explains immediate mode versus retained mode rendering.

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I'm sure the future blog posts will have more details, but it has to do with immediate mode vs retained mode APIs. this video

Cites itsrcmapNov 2017

“Firefox's servo engine can compose CSS elements/Display List together at 500 frames / second.”

Shows Servo composing CSS display lists at 500 frames per second.

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According to this: this video Firefox's servo engine can compose CSS elements/Display List together at 500 frames / second. Maybe next version of Windows / Linux desktop should use FF's servo engine?

in “Desktop compositing latency is real” · view on HN