Comments on: Adobe Flash Roasts My ‘Chestnuts’ w/50% CPU Use

By: Minnov8 Gang 68: Falling Through the Cloud? | Minnov8

Minnov8 Gang 68: Falling Through the Cloud? | Minnov8 — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:24:11 +0000

[...] Steve’s post about a personal Flash video test [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:40:07 +0000

I was playing a video on Facebook and wanted to see what the CPU was doing. Then I was wondering how this would be in Windows. Then I took it to other browsers. This is what I found.

Windows on VMWare IExplorer 6 – 40%
Windows on VMWare Firefox – 65%
Windows on VMWare Safari – 60%
Mac Firefox – 100%
Mac Safari – 140%

Video quality was essentially the same although Firefox and Safari on Mac seemed smoother. Mac has a more than 2x penalty for playing Flash than Windows (IE). Also, all browsers took a hit while it was downloading the video which doubled the CPU usage. I have a 2007 MacPro.

John, Mike, looking forward to that update!

By: Mike Chambers

Mike Chambers — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:00:25 +0000

John,

fyi

The main difference in performance for the video in this case, is that when using the HTML version, the video is most likely being played back via quicktime, which is hardware accelerated. On the Mac, the Flash video is not currently hardware accelerated (which is something that we are working on).

Not making any excuses, just giving you some more background on the differences.

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

By: Steve Borsch

Steve Borsch — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:31:46 +0000

Hi John. Thanks for the reply and for providing the links. My systems *are* optimized with Flash (MacPro 8 core/20GB RAM; MBPro as in the video; one gen old Mac mini; six others at the office) but every one of them, save the MacPro, have fans running to cool that hot CPU whenever Flash videos are playing and yes, all of our machines are current (version 10.0.45.2). I’m sort of used to the Mac mini fans roaring when watching Flash via Boxee on my HDTV, but that setup is nice and quiet when viewing a NetFlix movie since apparently Microsoft Silverlight is optimized for Mac already?

I’m enthused for Open Screen, CE vendors coming on board and future optimizations, but still need to stand by my characterization of the net-net, bottom line, cut-to-the-chase, essence of the issue: Flash today is roughly double the CPU need and thus seemingly makes the point *for* Apple that Flash on a mobile device — ones that rely on highly optimized runtimes to maximize battery life — are ill-served by a still-hungry-for-cycles Flash and I’ll change my tune once I see the ‘new and improved’ ship.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:14:14 +0000

Hi Steve, for the immediate concerns of roasting beneath an open fire, please move the laptop just a few inches further towards your knees, okay…?

Seriously, if you think your performance is different than similar configurations, here’s a fast way to identify the differences:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2010/02/troubleshooting_player_stabili.html

It would be good to move Macintosh video-decompression off the CPU onto hardware acceleration, as on Windows, but this is still difficult for plugins in Mac browsers. Still, we’ve been able to apply some of the work done for mobile memory and performance back to the desktop, and this will help Macs too, as Kevin Lynch describes:
http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/02/open_access_to_content_and_app.html#comment-2137153

You should also look forward to further performance improvements, now that Adobe Flash Player and Apple Safari are both supporting Core Animation, and as other browsers also change to avoid the significant performance hits of older drawing models… Tinic Uro has info:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

But, that said, big news occurred this week… I’ve got a high-level wrapup here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2010/02/and_with_60_of_precincts_repor.html

jd/adobe