amiga vs atari netsurf

[freeaks]

i noticed that netsurf on atari seems noticeably faster than amiga.

here's a blurry video of netsurf running on atari falcon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obDYaWp0wPo
you can see scrolling is faster but also: page lookup, fetching and initial rendering too.

another video, (milan 040):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNpFrk0YF_Y
on this video scrolling is bad, but look at the response time, how fast it does the lookup, fetch and initial render between the different pages being clicked up..

we've seen that on amiga the scrolling can be smooth and fast with arti's port on netsurf, so it can be done no problem here.
(for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AoZireGWtc)

what remains is the response time between the pages we click, the fetching, and initial render of pages.
what could make netsurf so slow on amiga ? (arti port fails here too).
something in the compile toolchain maybe ?

[kolla]

Faster CPUs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression

[freeaks]

faster cpus ? the milan 040 ? i don't think so.

also the fastest option for falcon is 060, even overclocked,
i would say with apollo 080, in worst case scenario, we should get at least same performances.

[eliyahu]

@freeaks

could it be that the amiga 68K version uses the SDL front-end rather than native rendering?

-- eliyahu

[chris]

That video is from 2011, so I'm not sure how directly comparable it is.
Fetching and page layout doesn't seem any quicker.

Page drawing looks quicker, but that might be an illusion.  Scrolling is quick but it's probably rendering the entire page in memory rather than drawing it "JIT".

You can compare the frontend code if you'd like to look for optimisations/differences.

[slaapliedje]

faster cpus ? the milan 040 ? i don't think so.

also the fastest option for falcon is 060, even overclocked,
i would say with apollo 080, in worst case scenario, we should get at least same performances.

If  you look at the comments on that video, the Milan had an 060 in it as well.

Also as stated by eliyahu, SDL performance isn't all that great.  Wasn't / isn't there a native MUI3/4 version being worked on?  (I guess MUI3/4 is considered as native as anything on the Amiga, without actually just using straight workbench UI).

[freeaks]

@chris:
i don't think the front end have much to do with the idea that netsurf seems slower on amiga.
i'm speaking of site lookup, page fetch and initial rendering.
for that effect, even without frontend at all is allright.
you could be rendering on a plain surface, without buttons,
input field, scrollbar or even without window decoration.

if you look again at those videos, you'll see that when the user click on some link, or enter address in location bar, the browser just react faster, it start fetching and loading the page almost immediately, while on amiga if doing the same, netsurf seems to wait a while doing nothing before it finally decide to do something.

i'm not trying to mock or blame or anything, what i'm saying is just observation, and my goal would be having better browsing experience on 68k.

[freeaks]

@slaapliedje

ok milan had 060, thanks for pointing this detail.
but still, we have 060 too we even have 080.
yet, we don't have same performance, why would that be ?
what could be causing this ?

amiga memory management, something in the compile toolchain,
bad tcp stack, a little bit of all those ? or anything else ?

here i'm just guessing, but, i think atari too have to be using sdl for their netsurf port.

[utri007]

Also as stated by eliyahu, SDL performance isn't all that great.  Wasn't / isn't there a native MUI3/4 version being worked on?  (I guess MUI3/4 is considered as native as anything on the Amiga, without actually just using straight workbench UI).

This has nothing to do with SDL. There is no MUI version, but this uses Reaction.

[chris]

if you look again at those videos, you'll see that when the user click on some link, or enter address in location bar, the browser just react faster, it start fetching and loading the page almost immediately, while on amiga if doing the same, netsurf seems to wait a while doing nothing before it finally decide to do something.

I don't see any delay here?  There was a bug I fixed which might have caused some pausing, maybe you're not using the latest version?

here i'm just guessing, but, i think atari too have to be using sdl for their netsurf port.

It has various font engines, but the plotters are native, not SDL.

I suggest you check the latest Atari build with the latest OS3 one, on similar hardware personally, rather than through a five year old video.  It's then possible to determine whether any aspects are faster or slower and investigate why that might be.

[freeaks]

i agree checking with latest version on both side is important.
but that would mean previous version of netsurf were faster than current ones ?

[utri007]

but that would mean previous version of netsurf were faster than current ones ?

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/temp/ChangeLog.txt

Adding features has a costs, usually more CPU power required. 2011 it was Netsurf 2.0?

[slaapliedje]

This has nothing to do with SDL. There is no MUI version, but this uses Reaction.

Ah yes, that's right.

I'd test this, unfortunately my Amiga is currently in the "need to figure out why the mediator won't work and gives me memory errors after swapping the Kickstart for the custom one that supports the 060 being plugged into the A3640" and my Falcon doesn't have an 060 in it yet.  Granted, I have yet to try getting netsurf running on it either, though I do have it Internet connected.

I do think Netsurf is the future for 68k browsing.  Though from what I can see, the latest port to the Atari is 2.9, vs 3.5 for the Amiga.  Hell, even Debian doesn't have a newer package than 3.2

P.S.  Maybe 3.5 build is only for AmigaOS 4?  I am pretty sure the last time I tried it on my A4000, it was 3.2 or so.

[utri007]

I do think Netsurf is the future for 68k browsing.  Though from what I can see, the latest port to the Atari is 2.9, vs 3.5 for the Amiga.  Hell, even Debian doesn't have a newer package than 3.2

P.S.  Maybe 3.5 build is only for AmigaOS 4?  I am pretty sure the last time I tried it on my A4000, it was 3.2 or so.

Latest is 3.6 dev, it is same than OS4 version, both are maintained By Chris Young

[chris]

I do think Netsurf is the future for 68k browsing.  Though from what I can see, the latest port to the Atari is 2.9, vs 3.5 for the Amiga.  Hell, even Debian doesn't have a newer package than 3.2.

http://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/atari/

There have been no release builds because there is no maintainer, so the state is unknown.