987124 - High power consumption with WebGL

Status: NEW

(Core :: Graphics: CanvasWebGL, defect, P3)

Description

[Roberto Agostino Vitillo (:rvitillo)]

Attachment: Testcase 1

As seen in the URL, the attached minimal WebGL example consumes up to 50% more energy with FF wrt. to IE and Chrome. In particular the GPU power consumption is extremely high, about 2x more than Chrome and about 6 times more than IE.

This is not an isolated case, I have seen a similar pattern with the more complex WebGL demos from https://code.google.com/p/webglsamples/.

Comment 1

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

Please note how you evaluated energy consumption.

Comment 2

[Roberto Agostino Vitillo (:rvitillo)]

I used Intel's Power Gadget, which in turn reads the power metrics from an MSR (Energy Status), see https://github.com/vitillo/energia.

Comment 3

[nemo]

Got curious about power consumption bug reports after reading http://www.anandtech.com/print/8327/browser-faceoff-battery-life-explored-2014
This one is awfully specific and unlikely to be the reason, but figured it'd be an intersting one to get e-mails on in the future anyway.

Comment 4

[Nicholas Nethercote [inactive]]

When I run the test case all I see is an unmoving white triangle on a black 
square. This seems strange for a demo called "Tut 03 OpenGL's Moving Triangle". 
Nonetheless, I took some measurements.

Nightly:

>     total W = _pkg_ (cores + _gpu_ + other) + _ram_ W
> #01  5.69 W =  4.25 ( 0.58 +  0.00 +  3.68) +  1.43 W
> 
> 1 sample taken over a period of 30.000 seconds
> 
> Name                               ID     CPU ms/s  User%  Deadlines (<2 ms, 2-5 ms)  Wakeups (Intr, Pkg idle)  GPU ms/s
> com.apple.Terminal                 224    194.75                                      82.70   71.74             0.00
>   firefox                          69796  101.73    74.46  0.37    1.37               71.28   63.85             0.00
>   plugin-container                 69797  87.99     75.52  3.83    3.17               11.03   7.53              0.00    
>   Terminal                         359    5.41      92.48  0.00    0.00               0.40    0.30              0.00    
> com.apple.WindowServer             68     102.72                                      127.69  120.69            0.00    
>   WindowServer                     142    102.96    73.70  7.93    60.01              127.66  120.70            0.00    
> kernel_coalition                   1      8.31                                        34.55   21.29             0.00
>   kernel_task                      0      5.95      0.00   1.23    0.00               34.39   21.19             0.00    

Chrome:

>     total W = _pkg_ (cores + _gpu_ + other) + _ram_ W
> #01  5.51 W =  4.07 ( 0.56 +  0.00 +  3.51) +  1.44 W
> 
> 1 sample taken over a period of 30.000 seconds
> 
> Name                               ID     CPU ms/s  User%  Deadlines (<2 ms, 2-5 ms)  Wakeups (Intr, Pkg idle)  GPU ms/s
> com.google.Chrome                  313    290.84                                      364.48  169.24            0.00
>   Google Chrome Helper             69823  109.90    65.61  0.00    0.00               60.08   56.42             0.00    
>   Google Chrome Helper             69825  104.06    67.34  120.03  0.00               179.15  53.58             0.00    
>   Google Chrome                    69819  79.46     61.59  63.48   0.10               125.16  59.22             0.00    
> com.apple.WindowServer             68     67.26                                       60.28   13.53             0.00    
>   WindowServer                     142    67.23     64.00  17.29   0.10               60.28   13.53             0.00    
> kernel_coalition                   1      13.48                                       47.58   31.12             0.00    
>   kernel_task                      0      11.22     0.00   1.27    0.00               47.29   31.06             0.00    
> com.apple.Terminal                 224    6.06                                        0.60    0.27              0.00    
>   Terminal                         359    5.90      89.39  0.00    0.00               0.53    0.23              0.00

Safari:

>     total W = _pkg_ (cores + _gpu_ + other) + _ram_ W
> #01  4.91 W =  3.50 ( 0.26 +  0.00 +  3.24) +  1.41 W
> 
> 1 sample taken over a period of 30.000 seconds
> 
> Name                               ID     CPU ms/s  User%  Deadlines (<2 ms, 2-5 ms)  Wakeups (Intr, Pkg idle)  GPU ms/s
> com.apple.Safari                   314    75.46                                       63.98   56.85             0.00
>   com.apple.WebKit.WebContent      69856  74.45     69.39  0.00    0.00               61.45   54.82             0.00
>   Safari                           69850  1.19      55.63  0.00    0.00               1.50    1.17              0.00
>   com.apple.WebKit.Networking      69852  0.17      48.57  0.00    0.00               0.60    0.47              0.00
>   com.apple.WebKit.WebContent      69855  0.09      35.01  0.00    0.00               0.43    0.40              0.00
> com.apple.WindowServer             68     70.15                                       66.11   60.71             0.00
>   WindowServer                     142    72.20     69.44  6.03    0.30               66.11   60.72             0.00
> kernel_coalition                   1      19.21                                       43.05   28.46             0.00
>   kernel_task                      0      16.81     0.00   2.53    0.03               42.85   28.22             0.00
> com.apple.Terminal                 224    5.71                                        0.53    0.50              0.00
>   Terminal                         359    5.55      90.31  0.00    0.00               0.47    0.43              0.00

Comment 5

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

Here is a profile of the testcase on a recent build: https://share.firefox.dev/3OpGk6n I haven't tried comparing with other browsers.