Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

Moderator: trava90

Forum rules
This board is for technical/general usage questions and troubleshooting for the Pale Moon browser only.
Technical issues and questions not related to the Pale Moon browser should be posted in other boards!
Please keep off-topic and general discussion out of this board, thank you!
Numko

Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by Numko » 2021-10-15, 12:06

I'm using version 29.4.1 (64-bit) in Linux (Manjaro). My computer has two cores and four threads.

Only one CPU thread is ever used by Pale Moon. This is only 25% of my CPU or half a core. It makes loading pages such as YouTube's front page take a long time and causes Pale Moon to freeze for a while while it loads big pages. This doesn't happen in Chromium, which uses 100% of my CPU and doesn't freeze.

I've read on here that Pale Moon is meant to be multi-threaded, but it isn't for me.

Why is this?

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-10-15, 14:17

It is multi-threaded but a lot still runs on the main thread and even stuff that does run on another thread may be what is pegging a core. Depends if the UI locks up or not.

Regardless, it is NOT multiprocess where GPU and AUDIO and each tab is on one process like Chrome. Of course Google shit is designed exclusively for Google's browser and their big tech rebuilds.

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35477
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-10-15, 16:22

Pale Moon is multithreaded. However, if websites insist on swamping the javascript engine with mainthread tasks (as opposed to worker threads) then you will of course notice this. It's an inherent result of shoving many megabytes of javascript down the browser's throat to all be compiled "just-in-time" on your PC.

Chromium will indeed use 100% of your CPU (and often do so whether it's reasonable or not ;-) ) because it's multi-process and puts a heavy load on your operating system's context switching capabilities. it will also mask very similar page hangs by letting the UI pretend to remain responsive while tab content is actually hanging.

See here. Pale Moon running, 68 threads in use.
Image1.png
There is, by the way, no such thing as a "cpu thread" in a program. That would be a misnomer for a separate program instance.

In comparison, by the way, here's my current Microsoft chrome-edge instance with only two tabs open. It has literally launched no less than 15(!!) copies of itself.
Do you think that's reasonable? I don't think it is. But you can draw your own conclusions.
Image2.png
P.S.: YouTube regularly runs like shit on Google's own browser, too :P
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

User avatar
jars_
Lunatic
Lunatic
Posts: 397
Joined: 2016-12-27, 00:12

Re: Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by jars_ » 2021-10-15, 17:30

multithread != multiprocess. Like, "hyperthreading" is not equal to physical_cores_of_processor ;)
SfMBE

User avatar
Al6bus
Lunatic
Lunatic
Posts: 288
Joined: 2015-08-24, 14:55
Location: Lemberg

Re: Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by Al6bus » 2021-10-15, 18:24

It's a good topic, by the way.
by Moonchild » 2017-11-17, 18:29
Multithreading is already extensively used, in both Pale Moon and Basilisk.
We plan to leverage parallelism more in the future, too, using OpenMP.
Is there any progress at the moment?
Windows 7 Pro x64 - Pale Moon x64
We hope for multiprocessing

New Tobin Paradigm

Re: Why does Pale Moon use only one CPU thread?

Unread post by New Tobin Paradigm » 2021-10-15, 18:32

Nop. Bigger fish to fry.

Locked