1459434 - Set "dom.min_background_timeout_value" based on performance

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, enhancement, P3)

Description

[daniel92frei]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
Build ID: Gecko/20100101

Steps to reproduce:

Running Firefox on an old Notebook with Celeron CPU.
Set "dom.min_background_timeout_value" from 1000 to 10000.

If i understand correctly, this setting defines how fast javascript in background-tabs can fire a timer again, right?
In Firefox Mobile it's already set to a very high value.

There are more and more Convertibles and Netbooks today with similiar performance to a fast Tablet. Firefox feels sluggish on them, with dotzens of open tabs.


Actual results:

Firefox became with 20+ open Tabs far more responsive.


Expected results:

"dom.min_background_timeout_value" set automatically, based on browsers responsiveness.
A setting like "dom.background_timeout_min_value" and "_max_value"

Comment 1

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

In general, dynamically adjusting values like this can be tricky to get right, but it sounds like an interesting idea.

Ehsan, do you have any thoughts on this?

Comment 2

[Ben Kelly [:bkelly, not reviewing]]

We now throttle timeouts in the background based on actual time used.  That budget based throttling should automatically account for slow hardware.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

Agreed with Ben.  That approach has the additional benefit that it's a heuristic that works across browsers now.

Daniel, do you see Chrome also show the same kind of sluggish behavior that you see in Firefox with the same number of tabs?  I'm asking since Chrome has the same budget based throttling mechanism as we do, so our behaviors should be the same more or less.

Comment 4

[daniel92frei]

Chromium (does that count, too?) has with 20+ Tabs about the same slugishness as Firefox has.
On this Notebook with Intel N3540 and on my Chromebook (GalliumOS) with Intel N2840, too.
Cause the integrated graphics are really weak, i already disabled OpenGL-rendering, which improved performance.
I too had issues with ugly font-rendering, which i fixed with use of cairo instead of skia. No such issue in Chromium. 
In search for further improvement of responsiveness, i stumbled over that thing with "dom.min_background_timeout_value".

Additional note: Currently i use the 52 LTS release with forced multiprocessing.
There's no budget based throttling?
Would the performance with the now released 60 LTS improve?
I prefer to stick with LTS.