Posted on 05/09/2009 12:49:43 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Mozilla's developers have announced plans to add application multithreading to Firefox over the next two years, a feature already partially enabled in its main rivals, IE8 and Google Chrome.
As well as allowing the software to take advantage of multicore microprocessors to boost responsiveness, the enhancement would also improve browser stability, the company said in a news blog on the subject.
The unnamed project will happen in several phases, with the phase one 'bootstrap' due to complete by the middle of this July. Further phases will add and debug more complex elements of the new browser, with phase two due to complete by November.
No timescale is given for the phases beyond that point in time, which suggests that multithreading Firefox could turn out to be a project that takes well in 2010 to even near completion.
The goal is to end up with a browser capable of running each tab as an independent process, which would stop a hang in one from crashing the whole program, as would currently be the case. "Security sandboxing will be covered in a later phase," notes the blog.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Getting ready for 6 way MP chips...good!
“enhancement would also improve browser stability”
there’s no programmatic reason it should.
Ya. Normally the opposite is true. And color me unimaginative but, if you have a multi-core processor, it’s already fast enough to run any browser with ease, one a single core.
Firefox can use lots of cycles if you have lots of windows and tabs open and some of that Java stuff doing whatever it does...gets sluggish for me....and I have enough hardware ....cause I want a super responsive system.That’s with a Linux...Ubuntu Jaunty system .
How about fine tuning firefox so it doesn’t gobble up a gigabyte of RAM if I leave it open while I’m at work.
I really have to be doing a lot of windows and graphics to see it go over 1 Gig,...even with the 64 bit systems...never have seen it over 2 Gig,...
They may be planning on isolating plugins etc. in threads other than the main browser thread. Something bad happens, it is only that thread that throws an exception. As long as the OS doesn't kick the entire process... It could be more stable. Thread gets into a runaway recursion and jumps it's stack? Handled... etc.
I've done a fair amount of multi-threading work, and by and large it does make programs more stable. You can do all kinds of nice clean implementations: park a thread on something waiting on IO, etc. You don't have to play polling games hoping your buffers don't overflow etc. You can be even more object-oriented, class X does Y, period. You don't have to call into it periodically to give it CPU time, etc.
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