Defaulting to AVX for 64-bit architectures?

[ChrisCat]

Not really. Since hitting the frequency ceiling and moving to multi-core processors, we've seen improvements with out of order execution, pipelining, speculative execution, etc.

This one ended with Spectre/Meltdown disaster.

It's still there. Yes, spectre and meltdown caused them to pull back, to be more careful and not so aggressive with it, but speculative execution still happens. But this also goes to show you can't rely on the CPU making your code fast like you used to, and continued improvement relies on the application to put in some leg work of its own to better utilize the processor's capabilities.

The improvements are indeed present, but they are rather minor. Increasing number of cores (and software threads using them) gives much more performance.

And using more threads hurts performance on CPUs with fewer cores. Whether it's one thread or three per CPU core, it will do the same amount of work in a given amount of time, and those context switches don't come free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_ ... plications Plenty of non-game and non-mining software uses it.

Most of them are distributed computing (it's not much different from mining) or video codecs.

And cryptography, JSON parsing, zlib compression, jpeg processing, and other algorithms. Video also isn't a niche part of the modern web.

I doubt there will be substantional performance improvement until that JS engine will be rewritten from scratch.

At least with what's been said so far, AVX does offer "considerable performance enhancement" and "greatly increase browsing speed" right now.

[andyprough]

Chrome and Firefox may not require AVX, but they also use different tactics for their performance, such as loading up on threads and using more memory.

Interesting idea. I wonder what the performance of Pale Moon would look like if it were allowed to be a memory hog like Chrome or Firefox. Let it use 3X the memory and do all kinds of pre-fetching and so forth. You could have a Chrome killer, it would be fun to see.

I mean, we've entered a world where no one is really able to use a modern OS without a minimum of 16GB of memory anyway, and 32GB+ will be the next new normal. Why not let it rip and see what happens? Could be loads of fun.

[Moonchild]

it's just not worth losing backward compatibility by gaining minor performance.

If it was truly minor, I wouldn't have started this discussion.

[Massacre]

I doubt there will be substantional performance improvement until that JS engine will be rewritten from scratch.

At least with what's been said so far, AVX does offer "considerable performance enhancement" and "greatly increase browsing speed" right now.

In heavy software media decoding scenario, maybe. Will it speed up JS of "modern web-applications" to be on par with Chromium that they specifically target? I doubt. Will be there much difference when rendering non-media / JS heavy sites (typical scenario of using Pale Moon for now, if you don't want to experience heavy interface lags)? I doubt, too.

[Massacre]

it's just not worth losing backward compatibility by gaining minor performance.

If it was truly minor, I wouldn't have started this discussion.

I mean, it's minor when comparing performance of problematic sites against Chromium.

[athenian200]

I mean, it's minor when comparing performance of problematic sites against Chromium.

If the user expectation is that we have to keep up with Chromium, then we might as well stop work on Pale Moon now, because that's not realistic. Even Firefox can't do that. And they basically abandoned all their principles trying.

[suzyne]

Will be there much difference when rendering non-media / JS heavy sites

Conversely, it can be suggested that for users who don't use such sites, then the memory space and speed of the 32 bit version of Pale Moon should be more than adequate. They don't need the 64 bit version anyway, so the direction it takes is of little consequence for them?

[Massacre]

If the user expectation is that we have to keep up with Chromium, then we might as well stop work on Pale Moon now, because that's not realistic. Even Firefox can't do that. And they basically abandoned all their principles trying.

Well, you can keep your niche, a lightweight browser designed for multiple non-JS demanding tabs...

[Massacre]

Conversely, it can be suggested that for users who don't use such sites, then the memory space and speed of the 32 bit version of Pale Moon should be more than adequate. They don't need the 64 bit version anyway, so the direction it takes is of little consequence for them?

As I mentioned before, platforms they are planning to drop do actually support at least 16 GB RAM.

[R3n_001]

As I mentioned before, platforms they are planning to drop do actually support at least 16 GB RAM.

LGA1366 can do 48GB, perhaps even 96GB. Pre-AVX.

If that doesn't count, I have two Phenoms that can do 32GB.

Some DDR3 Core 2 boards might be able to do 32GB too.

[suzyne]

Conversely, it can be suggested that for users who don't use such sites, then the memory space and speed of the 32 bit version of Pale Moon should be more than adequate. They don't need the 64 bit version anyway, so the direction it takes is of little consequence for them?

As I mentioned before, platforms they are planning to drop do actually support at least 16 GB RAM.

Yes, and that memory can be put to good purposes by other apps.

Do Pale Moon users who don't use the sites that are packed with JavaScript, and what not, actually consume those sorts (16GB) of amounts of memory for browsing? In my experience 2 ~ 3GB is the max that Pale Moon generally requires and needs. But then I don't relate to people who insist on keeping literally 100's of tabs open and treat open tabs like bookmarks.

[Massacre]

Yes, and that memory can be put to good purposes by other apps.

Do Pale Moon users who don't use the sites that are packed with JavaScript, and what not, actually consume those sorts (16GB) of amounts of memory for browsing? In my experience 2 ~ 3GB is the max that Pale Moon generally requires and needs. But then I don't relate to people who insist on keeping literally 100's of tabs open and treat open tabs like bookmarks.

No, but ~4GB is a realistic scenario, especially in latest versions of Pale Moon, and 32-bit version tends to lag horribly after it allocates 1.5GB or something like that.

Well, there is a "workaround" by restarting Pale Moon to actually reclaim memory lost in memory leaks for already closed pages... I believe it is related to "JS runtime".

[suzyne]

~4GB is a realistic scenario

I don't want to be one of the What! There are people who use the internet in ways different from me? type of forum user, but I would love to know the use case for going over 3GB, because I never have in Pale Moon.

Sure, in other mainstream browsers it might be easier (or when there is a memory leak), but I just haven't gone there in Pale Moon.

[moonbat]

I would love to know the use case for going over 3GB, because I never have in Pale Moon.

Haven't you heard of the new trend of having an open tab count in the triple or quadruple digits because somehow one hasn't heard of bookmarks and needs to have all of them open all the time - and then come crying after the inevitable browser crash

[Piotr Kostrzewski]

I would love to know the use case for going over 3GB, because I never have in Pale Moon.

Haven't you heard of the new trend of having an open tab count in the triple or quadruple digits because somehow one hasn't heard of bookmarks and needs to have all of them open all the time - and then come crying after the inevitable browser crash

If you want to know, I exceeded 3 GB usage in Pale Moon. Not intentionally, and only with one page: https://to-do.office.com/tasks/ (after logging in) I was surprised by this fact. Does anyone else experience this type of wear and tear on this site?

[moonbat]

Off-topic:

Not intentionally, and only with one page: https://to-do.office.com/tasks/ (after logging in) I was surprised by this fact. Does anyone else experience this type of wear and tear on this site?

Was it after leaving the page open for some time, or almost as soon as you loaded it? I'm guessing the former, and usually that's a memory leak on the page that grows memory usage over time.

[Piotr Kostrzewski]

Was it after leaving the page open for some time, or almost as soon as you loaded it? I'm guessing the former, and usually that's a memory leak on the page that grows memory usage over time.

Almost as soon as the page loads.
And there were an awful lot of errors in the console.

[Massacre]

~4GB is a realistic scenario

I don't want to be one of the What! There are people who use the internet in ways different from me? type of forum user, but I would love to know the use case for going over 3GB, because I never have in Pale Moon.

It depends on what and how many sites you are using during same session. Unfortunately, if the site uses some Javascript that allocates memory, it may be never get completely freed.

[R3n_001]

Sure, in other mainstream browsers it might be easier (or when there is a memory leak), but I just haven't gone there in Pale Moon.

Can say my YouTube browser can reach over 5GB just on YouTube. I'd assume memory leak in code because I leave my computer on 24/7.

[ptribble]

I presume that keeping to an SSE2 baseline wouldn't invalidate status as an official build?

For Tribblix, I would do just that. I know that I have users on relatively old, but still fairly capable, hardware. And in general I would try and avoid being in the situation where the OS itself would work happily on a wide range of hardware (we require 64-bit, nothing more specific than that) but a key application wouldn't.

In terms of Linux distributions, my recollection is that Ubuntu is using x86-64-v1 as a baseline, RHEL and SLES are currently x86-64-v2, withe RHEL10 mooted as x86-64-v3. So adding an AVX requirement (which means x86-64-v3) means that you're shipping something that has more stringent requirements than the OS underneath. (And, in terms of Microarchitecture Levels, AVX and AVX2 come together.) That's my perspective, but as I'm not a Linux user I have no skin in the game at all.