Firefox: A Quantum Leap for the Web

[Batu69]

Over the past year, our top priority for Firefox was the Electrolysis project to deliver a multi-process browsing experience to users. Running Firefox in multiple processes greatly improves security and performance. This is the largest change we’ve ever made to Firefox, and we’ll be rolling out the first stage of Electrolysis to 100% of Firefox desktop users over the next few months.

But, that doesn’t mean we’re all out of ideas in terms of how to improve performance and security. In fact, Electrolysis has just set us up to do something we think will be really big.

We’re calling it Project Quantum.

Quantum is our effort to develop Mozilla’s next-generation web engine and start delivering major improvements to users by the end of 2017. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a web engine, it’s the core of the browser that runs all the content you receive as you browse the web. Quantum is all about making extensive use of parallelism and fully exploiting modern hardware. Quantum has a number of components, including several adopted from the Servo project.

The resulting engine will power a fast and smooth user experience on both mobile and desktop operating systems — creating a “quantum leap” in performance. What does that mean? We are striving for performance gains from Quantum that will be so noticeable that your entire web experience will feel different. Pages will load faster, and scrolling will be silky smooth. Animations and interactive apps will respond instantly, and be able to handle more intensive content while holding consistent frame rates. And the content most important to you will automatically get the highest priority, focusing processing power where you need it the most.

So how will we achieve all this?

Web browsers first appeared in the era of desktop PCs. Those early computers only had single-core CPUs that could only process commands in a single stream, so they truly could only do one thing at a time. Even today, in most browsers an individual web page runs primarily on a single thread on a single core.

But nowadays we browse the web on phones, tablets, and laptops that have much more sophisticated processors, often with two, four or even more cores. Additionally, it’s now commonplace for devices to incorporate one or more high-performance GPUs that can accelerate rendering and other kinds of computations.

One other big thing that has changed over the past fifteen years is that the web has evolved from a collection of hyperlinked static documents to a constellation of rich, interactive apps. Developers want to build, and consumers expect, experiences with zero latency, rich animations, and real-time interactivity. To make this possible we need a web platform that allows developers to tap into the full power of the underlying device, without having to agonize about the complexities that come with parallelism and specialized hardware.

And so, Project Quantum is about developing a next-generation engine that will meet the demands of tomorrow’s web by taking full advantage of all the processing power in your modern devices. Quantum starts from Gecko, and replaces major engine components that will benefit most from parallelization, or from offloading to the GPU. One key part of our strategy is to incorporate groundbreaking components of Servo, an independent, community-based web engine sponsored by Mozilla. Initially, Quantum will share a couple of components with Servo, but as the projects evolve we will experiment with adopting even more.

A number of the Quantum components are written in Rust. If you’re not familiar with Rust, it’s a systems programming language that runs blazing fast, while simplifying development of parallel programs by guaranteeing thread and memory safety. In most cases, Rust code won’t even compile unless it is safe.

We’re taking on a lot of separate but related initiatives as part of Quantum, and we’re revisiting many old assumptions and implementations. The high-level approach is to rethink many fundamental aspects of how a browser engine works. We’ll be re-engineering foundational building blocks, like how we apply CSS styles, how we execute DOM operations, and how we render graphics to your screen.

Quantum is an ambitious project, but users won’t have to wait long to start seeing improvements roll out. We’re going to ship major improvements next year, and we’ll iterate from there. A first version of our new engine will ship on Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Someday we hope to offer this new engine for iOS, too.

We’re confident Quantum will deliver significantly improved performance. If you’re a developer and you’d like to get involved, you can learn more about Quantum on the the Mozilla wiki, and explore ways that you can contribute. We hope you’ll take the Quantum leap with us.

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Can Mozilla’s Quantum project make Firefox king again?

Spoiler

The browser world has changed considerably since the release of the first version of the Google browser Google Chrome.

Google Chrome managed to snag a sizeable share of the browser market not only on the desktop but also on mobile.

 

Google pushed Chrome hard on its properties and via third-party agreements (Flash pushes Chrome up to this day), but that was just one part of why Chrome is used by the majority of Internet users on today's Internet -- at least on the desktop.

 

This rise had an impact on the then reigning browsers Firefox and Internet Explorer which both lost market share to Google's browser.

Mozilla found itself in a situation where it was clearly behind in many areas: in performance, responsiveness, and security for instance. Firefox still reigned in other areas, customization options, a superior add-on and personalization system, and general user control of the browser.

 

Mozilla Quantum

 

Quantum is the next step in Mozilla's plan to reconquer the browser market and provide its users with an improved way to browse the web.

 

Quantum, as David Bryant, head of platform engineering at Mozilla, puts it, is "Mozilla's next-generation web engine". Mozilla plans to land parts of Quantum in Firefox in 2017, and Bryant suggests that Firefox users will see "major improvements" by the end of the year.

So what is so special about Quantum?

Quantum is all about making extensive use of parallelism and fully exploiting modern hardware. Quantum has a number of components, including several adopted from the Servo project.

Implementation-wise, Quantum parts will replace their equivalent in Firefox's Gecko engine when they are ready. This allows Mozilla to ship those parts when they are ready which in turn means that Firefox users will benefit from the improvements they bring along with them immediately.

 

Quantum will replace parts that benefit from parallelization and offloading to the GPU.

The components that will likely make it into Firefox in 2017 are parallel layout, parallel styling, WebRender, and Constellation.

 

You are probably wondering how big of an impact those components make when they are introduced. The answer is it depends. First, on the machine that Firefox is running on. To use parallelization, there need to be multiple cores available. Second, on the website that the user accesses. On Wikipedia for instance, a site that is not optimal for Quantum optimizations, style and layout compute times drop by about 50% with four cores.

 

On Reddit however, a site that Quantum benefits from more due to the way the site is designed, compute time drops to a quarter or less of the Gecko compute time.

 

The worst case scenario -- nothing can be handled using parallelization -- still offers a 10% advantage over Firefox's current engine Gecko.

The following video is a presentation by Jack Moffitt who talks about Servo in particular and how it will benefit Firefox in the near future.

 

Quantum will make Firefox a lot faster and more responsive than it is today. The difference is significant, and will be noticeable when you compare Firefox's performance to that of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or other browsers according to Mozilla.

You can find out more about Quantum on Mozilla Wiki.

Closing Words

Can the Quantum Project make Firefox king again in the browser world? I think it will be beneficial to the browser's market share, provided that Mozilla gets it done right and that Chrome or Edge won't introduce similar functionality at around the same time.

 

I doubt that it is enough to kick Chrome from the throne, but it is likely that Firefox will see an uptick caused by it.

 

Source

 

[Skidro]

1 hour ago, Batu69 said:

We’re calling it Project Quantum.

 

Why don't they just call it Project Chrome? 

[pc71520]

18 hours ago, Batu69 said:

Quantum has a number of components, including several adopted from the Servo project.

Too many Projects = What a MESS...

[DKT27]

From what I can understand, basically, this means a better use of CPU cores and GPU. Like, if a person has quad core CPU, one part of the page loading will be loaded by using one core, the other part, will be loaded by using another and such. The graphics related part will be loaded by using the GPU. In addition to other things.

 

While this is something I have been asking from a long time now, but I did not know that they needed whole another project to implement it.

 

The only problem I have with Mozilla is how long it takes for them to deliver it.

 

Still, the amount of work has been put in Firefox, just run a version made a few years ago, then try the newer versions, the difference is staggering, I think.

[Metatron]

Quote

See the video of Jack Moffitt’s Web Engines Hackfest presentation for a preview of some of the Servo components that will be integrated into Firefox.

 

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum

 

[jamesbond]

The only problem I have with Mozilla is how long it takes for them to deliver it.

 

thinking back when they first started talking about e10s... then pulled it back again and again. or how many years it took to even release a x64 version of the browser.

 

quantum sounds good. but maybe in 4 years.

[DKT27]

1 hour ago, jamesbond said:

The only problem I have with Mozilla is how long it takes for them to deliver it.

 

thinking back when they first started talking about e10s... then pulled it back again and again. or how many years it took to even release a x64 version of the browser.

 

quantum sounds good. but maybe in 4 years.

 

Agreed. That's it, we are hearing these things from a long time. For 64-bit version for example as you had given, I used to regularly track and read comments and work going on Bugzilla for it. Then, they change it to that they will not release the 64-bit version. Was kinda sad with it. Then, without any comments on the Bugzilla, atleast not on the bugs I was tracking, Mozilla announces that they are going to release the 64-bit version. Now, we can ignore that surprise part, but you know when this bug request to release a 64-bit version of Firefox was made. More than seven years ago, such a long time they took to release it, that too, only sometime ago.

 

Now, I'm not saying it's the same here. In those days, 64-bit use was not the same as now, then there were other issues that were stopping it's work, then no other competitive browsers implemented it, no one from the browser developers were interested in it.

 

But in this, Mozilla has taken a personal interest. This is something which is nice to see. Them taking personal interest means it will be taken as a priority, which is far better than just a suggestion from a user.

 

The problem Mozilla is facing however, is lack of funds and lack of market share. While the funds part means they cannot put a lot of money into it, what people do not understand that not only a lot of users switched to Chrome, a lot of developers, the ones that even contributed to the Firefox and it's development, probably, I repeat, probably, switched to Chrome too. Here lies the problem, not only users, but there are not enough people to improve the software.

 

But it's not like Mozilla is not doing anything with Firefox though. They are working hard. They are trying to innovate, do new things, fix bugs of ages, fix common problems associated with the browser, making it faster, more secure, it's putting a lot into it. Infact, I can even say that Mozilla these days is doing quite more than it used to do in lets say from last few years I think.

[rseiler]

$375 million annually from Yahoo (or whoever buys Yahoo), and over $300 million annually from Google before that, should be enough funding, don't you think?
 

[DKT27]

15 minutes ago, rseiler said:

$375 million annually from Yahoo (or whoever buys Yahoo), and over $300 million annually from Google before that, should be enough funding, don't you think?

 

While I do not remember the numbers, I did remember that. Before that deal, it seemed like Mozilla was trying a lot to save some money, I think it effected the way how Mozilla and it's products were running. Thing with the new deal though, the company we speak of is in problems and uncertainty, with no one knowing if another company will buy it or not and if they do, I do not know if they will continue to do business with Mozilla or not. I wish Mozilla could have stayed with Google, but I doubt Google was interested in it.