Closed Bug 78961 Opened 23 years ago Closed 23 years ago

MEM: More memory footprint reduction in the style system

Categories

(Core :: CSS Parsing and Computation, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

VERIFIED WONTFIX
Future

People

(Reporter: pierre, Assigned: pierre)

References

()

Details

(Keywords: embed, perf)

Bug 43457 is becoming too long.  I'm moving the discussion here and on the 
n.p.m.style newsgroup: news://news.mozilla.org/3AF314D7.4C896990%40netscape.com
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Keywords: perf
Target Milestone: --- → Future
Depends on: 43457
Imported dependencies from bug 43457.
Blocks: 47159, 71874, 72381
Depends on: 39618
Keywords: embed
Excerpt from the first message in the newsgroup...
----
We are now in the third step of the memory footprint reduction work.  The
first step was StyleContext sharing implemented by Marc last summer, enabled
last winter, and described in bug 39618.  The second step was just completed
(er, mostly completed) when I checked in the StyleData sharing yesterday.  It
is described in bug 43457.  

  http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39618
  http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43457

The third step is going in at least 3 directions:
1) Performance optimization in order to re-enable StyleContext sharing at the
same time as StyleData sharing.  This will get done when I'm back in July.
2) David Hyatt's "Style Sharing on Steroids" proposal.  Let's call it the
"style rules lexicographic tree".  The work is in progress and fairly well
advanced.  See bug 43457 starting at "David Hyatt [2001-05-02 13:56]".
3) My own "Style Sharing on Steroids (Take 2)" proposal.  Let's call it the
"StyleData library".  I will work on it later this summer if the results from
the lexicographic tree are not satisfactory, or if there is still some room
left for improvement.
----

The current bug covers all three points for now.  We may decide to fork later.
As a first contribution, I can say that if someone wants to look at #1 while I am 
away, it would certainly the biggest bang for the buck, considering that both 
codes (StyleContext sharing and StyleData sharing) have been extensively tested 
over the past several weeks or months.  A relatively easy way to optimize things 
would be to implement memory pools for the StyleBlobs and reduce the number of 
calls to GetStyleData / ReadMutableStyleData when possible (see bug 77939 for 
instance).

Waterson: you were thinking about doing some profiling.  If you get some data, 
please post it here.

Below are some statistics that I gathered before doing the StyleData sharing 
about the number of calls to GetStyleData / GetMutableStyleData for each of the 
style structures.  These stats are now outdated (I already reduced some of these 
calls a little bit; the XUL blob was added in the meanwhile).  If someone wants 
to resuscitate the code, it is in nsStyleContextDebug.  The output is triggered 
through a function that is implemented for the Mac only but very easily portable 
to other platforms.

------------------------------------------------------------
**** Statistics for Yahoo ****
------------------------------------------------------------

----GetStyleData-------------------------------
                                calls   calls%
eStyleStruct_Font                5129      6
eStyleStruct_Color              13078     16
eStyleStruct_List                  79      -
eStyleStruct_Position            9780     12
eStyleStruct_Text                8972     11
eStyleStruct_Display            22643     29
eStyleStruct_Table               1752      2
eStyleStruct_Content              101      -
eStyleStruct_UserInterface       3861      5
eStyleStruct_Print                912      1
eStyleStruct_Margin              2703      3
eStyleStruct_Padding             3050      3
eStyleStruct_Border              3626      4
eStyleStruct_Outline             1397      1
TOTAL                           77083    100           389 ms
----GetMutableStyleData-------------------------
                                calls   calls%
eStyleStruct_Font                1937     28
eStyleStruct_Color                354      5
eStyleStruct_List                  37      -
eStyleStruct_Position             166      2
eStyleStruct_Text                 207      3
eStyleStruct_Display             1030     15
eStyleStruct_Table                132      1
eStyleStruct_Content                4      -
eStyleStruct_UserInterface        268      3
eStyleStruct_Print                961     14
eStyleStruct_Margin               339      4
eStyleStruct_Padding              519      7
eStyleStruct_Border               607      8
eStyleStruct_Outline              294      4
TOTAL                            6855    100           36 ms
-----------------------------------------------
TOTAL time = 426243 microsecs (= 426 ms)
------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------
**** Statistics for Netscape ****
------------------------------------------------------------

----GetStyleData-------------------------------
                                calls   calls%
eStyleStruct_Font                9395      6
eStyleStruct_Color              20839     14
eStyleStruct_List                  70      -
eStyleStruct_Position           18112     12
eStyleStruct_Text               17602     12
eStyleStruct_Display            38613     27
eStyleStruct_Table               3975      2
eStyleStruct_Content              249      -
eStyleStruct_UserInterface       6109      4
eStyleStruct_Print               1321      -
eStyleStruct_Margin              5808      4
eStyleStruct_Padding             6680      4
eStyleStruct_Border              8321      5
eStyleStruct_Outline             2666      1
TOTAL                          139760    100           698 ms
----GetMutableStyleData-------------------------
                                calls   calls%
eStyleStruct_Font                2844     25
eStyleStruct_Color                783      7
eStyleStruct_List                  31      -
eStyleStruct_Position             247      2
eStyleStruct_Text                 500      4
eStyleStruct_Display             1947     17
eStyleStruct_Table                120      1
eStyleStruct_Content                0      -
eStyleStruct_UserInterface        339      3
eStyleStruct_Print               1359     12
eStyleStruct_Margin               515      4
eStyleStruct_Padding              881      8
eStyleStruct_Border               964      8
eStyleStruct_Outline              471      4
TOTAL                           11001    100           61 ms
-----------------------------------------------
TOTAL time = 762317 microsecs (= 762 ms)
------------------------------------------------------------
Another thing to do for #1 is to understand why the nsIMutableStyleContext APIs 
are a bit slower when they pass a structure on the stack to ReadMutableStyleData 
than when they receive (as they do now) a global structure returned by 
ReadMutableStyleData.  Since the contructors for all the style blobs are 
basically empty, the slowdown could come from the creation of strings or other 
member variables inside the blobs. Marked dependency on bug 74771 if someone 
wants to investigate.  It would be nice to switch the APIs to use member 
variables.
Hyatt opened a separate bug for the style rules lexicographic tree: bug 78695.
Depends on: 78695
Is this still applicable?
Sounds like #3 is still on the table if we need more improvement; to be
determined later.
Actually, none of the proposals in this bug are worth pursuing.  The sharing
achieved by the new rule tree works very differently.  There are really only two
cases in the rule tree where we don't get optimal sharing.

(1) The HTML4 mapped attributes should be broken up into unique rules based off
type, e.g., so that

<img border="0" width="10" height="10">

creates two rules, one for border and one for position, rather than one rule for
border and position.

The reason you want to do this is that if you had the above img tag in the same
doc as the following tag:

<img border="0" width="5" height="5">

you get two border structs and two position structs, since each img creates one
unique rule.  

I view this as a minor optimization, though, since in my profiling of about 12
different HTML pages, it was really only the border struct that got needlessly
cloned, and it wasn't that extensive anyway.

(2) Inline style attrs with the same value could share a style rule.  Then you'd
get sharing on that level, e.g., if you have two tags

<td style="border:3px">

and

<td style="border:3px">

We could ensure that the two uses of inline style map to the same style rule. 
Again, this is a minor optimization, since with the rule tree you'd only fork
structs that were actually specified by the inline style attribute (which
typically specified only one or two properties).

In that case, we should either close this, or (to retain the minor optimizations
as a possible enhancement in the future) leave it as future and set severity to
minor or enhancement.  Someone should also check the bugs this was marked as a
blocker to.  Again, great work, Dave!
Other areas for footprint reduction involve reducing the sizes of the structs
themselves.  In particular, the borders/margins/padding structs are way bigger
than they need to be.
No longer blocks: 47159
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Bug 78695 made this one obsolete.
v
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
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