307668 - Firefox PPC in Mac OS X not optimized at all

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[M-Rick]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

It is has been shown that the new Apple developer computer based on INtel chips
runs Tiger with an emulator called Rosetta for PPC coded softwares. This
emulator runs the softwares natively in the system and translate PPC code into
x86 code on the fly, so there is a loss of speed of around 20-30 %.

But with Firefox running via Rosetta it is faster than directly under PPC ! So
it is really clear that the Mac OS X PPC version of Firefox it is really not
optimized at all.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 307669 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Josh Aas]

"But with Firefox running via Rosetta it is faster than directly under PPC!"

IIRC, this statement might be a violation of your agreement with Apple. I don't
think you are allowed to reveal anything that could be construed as a
performance benchmark, among other things. You should bring such issues up with
Apple and other developers privately. I am not a lawyer, I'm just throwing that
out there.

I have run FF under Rosetta, and I'm not going to talk about my experiences
other than to say I saw nothing unexpected. You'll have to dig deeper into the
reasons for what you see, or talk to me or someone else privately. It is simply
not true that "it is really clear" that we are not optimized for PPC.

Comment 3

[M-Rick]

I do not violate any agreement since I don't have a developer Mac Intel. 

These informations are available everywhere on the net if you googled a little bit

http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/Les_Mac_Intel_dApple_impressionnent_les_developpeu.htm
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/050714/308/4i2w0.html
http://www.unixtech.be/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=5
"Après quelques tests, les logiciels tournant sous Rosetta sont légèrement moins
rapides tout de même, de l'ordre de 65 à 70 % de la vitesse normale du logiciel
tournant sous Power PC. Mais certaines applications ne sont même pas ralenties,
comme Firefox par exemple, dont la version Power PC tourne aussi rapidement sur
un Pentium 3,6 GHz avec Rosetta que sur un bi-Power PC à 2 GHz ! "

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11542
"He meant that the PPC version of Firefox ran faster in emulation on the Intel
developer Macs than they run native on the highest-end PPC Macs."

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1175
"However, some PowerPC-native applications realize little to no speed reductions
while running under Rosetta. A source told AppleInsider the current PowerPC
version of the popular Firefox web browser loads just as fast under Mac OS X
Intel as it does on a high-end dual processor Power Mac G5."

http://www.betanews.com/article/Report_Intel_Based_Apple_Macs_Fast/1121365969
"According to some rudimentary speed tests, applications run at around 65 to 70
percent of their normal speed in Rosetta; however, some programs such as Firefox
show no noticeable speed difference at all. Apple has publicly said that work
continues on making Rosetta as fast as possible."

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I do not violate any agreement since I don't have a developer Mac Intel. 

Then it's hearsay. None of these reports claim this ("aussi rapidement" means
"just as fast"). Only a comment on osnews claims otherwise, but puts the word in
the mouth of Asa (who is not the "firefox mac guy").

You can see the actual buildflags by typing "about:buildconfig". We're using -O2
(on PowerPC).