Key Points
- Chrome has achieved best-in-class Speedometer scores on mobile devices, resulting in faster and smoother web experiences for Android users.
- Since the release of Chrome M112, Speedometer 2.1 scores on Android devices have more than doubled, with the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform setting new records for Speedometer performance on mobile devices.
- The improvements were achieved through a combination of build optimizations, V8 and Blink improvements, and scheduling and SoC optimizations.
Chrome, the popular web browser, has always been about speed. Whether it’s loading pages quickly, running complex web apps smoothly, or delivering a seamless browsing experience, performance is at the heart of the browser. Recently, Chrome has made significant progress in improving its speed on Android devices.
To measure Chrome’s performance, the browser uses the Speedometer benchmark, which tracks how quickly Chrome can complete interactions with web pages, including parsing/rendering HTML or CSS and running JavaScript. Since the release of Chrome M112, Speedometer 2.1 scores on Android devices have more than doubled, with the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform setting new records for Speedometer performance on mobile devices.
Build Optimizations
Chrome’s build process has undergone significant changes, resulting in faster code execution tuned to modern premium Android devices and SoCs. The changes include:
- Building Chrome for 64-bit Arm instead of 32-bit Arm, allowing for more efficient Arm instruction set features and larger 64-bit operations.
- Compiling C++ code optimized for speed (-O2 / -O3) instead of size (-Oz).
- Tweaking the inlining thresholds used by the compiler to enable more inlining in hot code.
- Applying profile-guided optimization (PGO) techniques to the build to further improve the code layout and optimization level for hot code.
These build optimizations account for more than half of the overall Speedometer score improvements. This progress was facilitated by the collaboration with Arm, who contributed valuable insights and improvements.
V8 and Blink Improvements
V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine, and Blink, its rendering engine, have also undergone significant improvements, contributing most of the remaining Speedometer impact. Some notable improvements include:
- Utilizing an optimized fast-path HTML parser to parse innerHTML attributes.
- Launching the Sparkplug compiler tier, a super fast baseline compiler that sits right above the Ignition interpreter and generates non-optimized code quickly.
- Launching Maglev, a new mid-tier compiler that generates semi-optimized code.
- Tuning heuristics that decide when garbage collection occurs.
Scheduling and SoC Optimizations
Chrome’s performance has also been improved through the collaboration with Android partners, who have invested heavily in tuning the operating system’s thread scheduling and frequency scaling policies. The collaboration with Qualcomm resulted in a 60-80% improvement in Speedometer 3.0 compared to its predecessor.
The improvements achieved through the combination of build optimizations, V8 and Blink improvements, and scheduling and SoC optimizations translate to significant improvements in real user interactions with web content, such as faster page loads and interactions. For example, loading a Google Docs document on Pixel Tablet took more than 50% longer than it does today.
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