Port performance enhancements / compiler optimizations from Thorium browser

HunterAP

There is a fork of the Chromium browser called Thorium. The main for Thorium is to include compiler and other optimizations to improve performance and add support for features not normally available in Chromium.

Here is the list of optimizations and improvements that the creator of Thorium mentions specifically:

Compiler optimizations include SSE4.2, AVX, AES, and modifications to CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, thinLTO flags, import_instr_limit flags, and PGO, as well as other compiler flags.
LLVM LOOP optimizations as -mllvm flags
UI Changes and Patches for Linux and Windows that fix bugs, enhance useability, and strengthen privacy/security.
Support for MPEG-DASH, JPEG XL, VAAPI for Linux,

The have the full list of changes here, and there are quite a few of them.
Thorium website: https://thorium.rocks/
Thorium's main GitHub page: https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium
Thorium's Windows builds: https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win
They similarly have other pages for Linux, MacOS, Windows on ARM64, Raspberry Pi, Android, etc.

The reason I mention Thorium is that I have been using Vivaldi for roughly 3-4 years and love the features that it includes, but performance has been lacking for me. Simply opening a new tab of a YouTube video takes longer than even vanilla Chrome or FireFox, and they both get beaten out by Thorium. I would love to have the best of both worlds by having the features of Vivaldi with the performance of Thorium.

mib3berlin

@HunterAP
Hi, if Vivaldi is slower than Chrome on your system it does not work correctly or is blocked from third party security software.
Open a new YT tab in Vivaldi need 1,54 seconds, the same on Chrome need 1.80 seconds on my laptop.
Specs in my signature.
I cant find a Linux build, I guess you have to compile by yourself.
I would like to test this on my Windows 11 system but cant find a Windows build either.
I am not against your request but in my experience the Vivaldi team does not fork Chromium.

EDIT: I found the .zip and installer for Windows, Linux.

npro

@HunterAP I know of Thorium, last time I benchmarked it vs. Vivaldi, Vivaldi was ahead of it in performance (Speedometer) and last time I read about it it wasn't that private as people believed to, lots of Google stuff there. I'd better use Ungoogled Chromium instead.

npro

@npro Here they are side by side: (Vivaldi Snapshot vs. Thorium)

HunterAP

@mib3berlin I specifically copied all my windows, tabs, bookmarks, and extensions from Vivaldi to Thorium. I opened all the same windows & tabs on both, and loaded the same YouTube video. On Vivaldi it loaded in 2.36 seconds, whereas on Thorium it loaded in 1.57 seconds. I can list out my PC specs, but I would imagine that Thorium would have a disadvantage since it didn't have anything cached like I do with Vivaldi, and yet it still performed better.

Ayespy

@HunterAP So you lost 3/4 of a second for Vivaldi to render a UI layer that Thorium does not have.

npro

@npro More benchmarks:

octvt copy.png

HunterAP

@Ayespy That was just one example - there are lots of other scenarios where Thorium has loaded faster than Vivaldi. Obviously part of it comes from the extra UI and features that Vivaldi has, but considering Thorium has done the brunt of the development work to achieve these performance improvements.

Vivaldi recently had this blog post discussing many performance improvements under the hood that specifically lists that opening new windows is 37% faster. If it only took 3 seconds to load then saving 1 second of that is insignificant by what you described.

Some of the changes would require some work in the code, but part of the changes were just using other compiler flags for effectively free performance. Isn't that worth looking into?

npro

@npro and

Vivaldi beats it in all 3 benchmark tests.

Ayespy

@HunterAP said in Port performance enhancements / compiler optimizations from Thorium browser:

Isn't that worth looking into?

I wouldn't know. I'm not a developer, don't work for Vivaldi, and have exactly zero speed problems here (not counting the stubborn problem of forum loading, which is at the server side).

mib3berlin

@HunterAP
But a open a new window take < 1 second in Vivaldi, if not something is wrong.
The main problem is the Vivaldi team keep the Vivaldi source code as close as possible to the Chromium core.
The more you change the more you have to maintain for an update.
They have problems to fix the issues for each update and they skip one Chromium version to keep up with the pace of updates in the Chromium core.

Cheers, mib

npro

@Ayespy said in Port performance enhancements / compiler optimizations from Thorium browser:

problem of forum loading

have you tried clearing (just) the browser's Cache?

mib3berlin

Speedometer Test
Thorium 224
Stable 244
Snapshot 6.4 177
Internal 6.4 build 117!
On Windows 11 Pro.

npro

@mib3berlin

Internal 6.4 build

Can't be, do you use a clean profile and not using any CPU in the background? (though it's Winblows, you never know what kind of crap is running in the background there)

P.S. Vivaldi's score is even higher with the --disable-extensions flag.

mib3berlin

@npro
Clean profile on stable, used on snapshot and soprano with open task manager.
There was no other CPU activity and this was at Ryzen 7 6 core.
I have clean profiles for all, I can test this again.

EDIT: Clean profiles are faster but the tendency is different:
Stable 221
Snapshot 241
Soprano 177
I leave Windows now, thought testing on it would be more useful, only 5% use Linux on desktop.

npro

@mib3berlin said in Port performance enhancements / compiler optimizations from Thorium browser:

only 5% use Linux on desktop.

That's not accurate in the case of Vivaldi, I remember them telling us some years ago that 20% of Vivaldi's installs are on Linux, I believe the % should be even higher now.

mib3berlin

@npro
Ah yes, thats true, many Vivaldi user on Linux.
Anyway, all builds are slower on Linux but the range is the same.

Snapshot
Stable
Soprano
May I should make a bug report.

@HunterAP
I am sorry we occupied your thread for testing, i will stop this now.

Cheers, mib

npro

@mib3berlin said in Port performance enhancements / compiler optimizations from Thorium browser:

we occupied your thread for testing

not at all, that testing (3 benchmarks) is the exact testing Thorium does to claim that it is faster than Chromium due to "tweaks", but it isn't faster than Vivaldi, meaning V. could use already certain compiling flags, tweaks etc.

slower on Linux

on your Linux

mib3berlin

@npro
Haha, if you not run the tests on Windows 11 with the same hardware you cant know.
The Speedometer use ~12 % of my 6 core AMD CPU, a bit more on Windows and there the GPU is full supported.
I guess it is not a real world test, Vivaldi on Linux is faster at starting, open tabs and what not, no question.

npro

@mib3berlin well theoretically in some other dimension/universe I could try that, but in this one I wouldn't last the unspeakable horrors! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRGROMvU7nc