850185 - [Workers] postMessage is sometimes slower than JSON.stringify

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Workers, defect, P3)

Description

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

While attempting to improve bug 850184, I have run a few benchmarks on JSON.stringify + TextEncode vs postMessage for huge JSON objects. Some of the results are surprising. As it turns out, in my test case, JSON.stringify is faster than postMessage. I suspect that this is not expected.

Comment 1

[Kyle Huey (Exited; not receiving bugmail, old account, do not use)]

I don't understand what you're trying to compare here.  postMessage sends stuff to a different thread, JSON.stringify doesn't, no?

Comment 2

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Yes, I was just surprised because I expect that, for a huge object, the cost of serialization in postMessage dominates any other cost cost. If my understanding is correct, I am therefore comparing two serialization mechanisms: postMessage's and JSON.stringify. Given that JSON.stringify is anything but optimal, I expected postMessage's algorithm to be quite faster.

Comment 3

[Kyle Huey (Exited; not receiving bugmail, old account, do not use)]

Well we haven't really tried to optimize structured cloning.  A profile would be useful here.

Comment 4

[Marion Daly [:mdaly]]

Worth investigating in the future.