aebrahim: W32 2004-01-30 optimised for P4-SSE2/AthlonXP-SSE

aebrahim · Post by **aebrahim** » January 30th, 2004, 8:25 am

These are all Trunk Builds.

I built Mozilla Firebird today from CVS with MSVC++ .NET 2003 using some optimisations. To build on MSVC++ .NET 2003, I used the temporary solution provided here. The one bug that's blocking full native build support on MSVC++ .NET 2003 (without any code modifications) is:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208314

If you'd like to see native build support for MSVC++ .NET 2003, please sign into Bugzilla and vote for this bug, or better yet, contribute a patch. Thanks.

Optimised for Pentium 4, Pentium M, Celeron 1.7GHz+ and Athlon64 with SSE2 (-O2 -G7 -GL -arch:SSE2):
http://pryan.org/firebird/aebrahim/Mozi ... L-SSE2.zip (7.18MB - zip)
http://pryan.org/firebird/aebrahim/Mozi ... L-SSE2.exe (5.38MB - 7z sfx)
The above build will work on Pentium 4, Pentium M, Celeron 1.7 GHz and above and Athlon64 systems ONLY.

Optimised for Athlon XP and some newer Durons with SSE (-O2 -G7 -GL -arch:SSE):
http://pryan.org/firebird/aebrahim/Mozi ... GL-SSE.zip (7.18MB - zip)
http://pryan.org/firebird/aebrahim/Mozi ... GL-SSE.exe (5.38MB - 7z sfx)
The above build will work on systems that support the SSE instruction set ONLY.

checkout start: Fri Jan 30 00:03:11 PST 2004

I should note that I can't guarantee that these builds will work with Windows 95 (Microsoft has removed Windows 95 as a target platform on their .NET 2003 version of development tools), but they will work with Windows 98/NT4 or better, and probably on Windows 95 too.

You can find a copy of these builds (and my older builds) on pryan's mirror:
http://pryan.org/firebird/aebrahim

My .mozconfig is as follows:

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="see build info"
ac_add_options --enable-static
ac_add_options --disable-shared

My builds have the following preference set:
pref("general.useragent.vendorComment", "aebrahim");

I've included a copy of my .mozconfig in the build folder itself. For more on what the optimisation switches do see this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us ... _.2f.o.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us ... _.2f.g.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us ... ecture.asp

EDIT: Note that because this is an -O2 build, and -O2 is actually categorically unsupported on Windows/MSVC, there may be some minor glitches in these builds. In any event, while I've found them to be fine for daily use, I ask that people not file bugs against these builds, and use the official nightly builds as a reference for what's working and what's not.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 8:31 am

I just put up the latest Scragz due to some comments on another thread when this shows up. I think that all of these recent builds are slower than your 1/1 build. I'm going to give your new build a shot as this probably has the global optimize in it and I'm curious to try it out. Back in a minute or two.

zab · Post by **zab** » January 30th, 2004, 8:36 am

Downloading now - I'll let you know how it performs.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 8:37 am

Up and running with profile from yesterday. No problems with the build. Speed seems good; maybe a bit better than other recent builds. It could be that the new TBE is sucking up the cycles that a faster firebird provides. I'll leave this running today and make a judgement on it later on. May have some time to do startup testing this weekend.

Paradox52525 · Post by **Paradox52525** » January 30th, 2004, 8:47 am

Thanks for the build as always. This is the first /GL build I've used (I missed the ones Stipe did). Seems very snappy so far. No problems I've noticed so far (and I have an old profile and about half a million extensions installed, including TBE, so I would say it's working pretty well ^_^).

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 8:59 am

I went for a cup of coffee and when I came back, there was a definite rendering problem. I have a lot of pages on auto-refresh with big images so this could be a cache or image problem or could be related to the optimizations. I don't know for sure. Going back to 2004-01-01 for now.

trooper21 · Post by **trooper21** » January 30th, 2004, 9:10 am

using now. fast and so far no problems. hope it doesn't give me bsod again.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 9:42 am

I went back to TBE 1-17-2004 and the browser's performance has improved. I'm running the new SSE version and performance is good. I'llleave it running to see if that rendering problem comes back.

ekettunen · Post by **ekettunen** » January 30th, 2004, 9:50 am

Runs smooth here, no problems so far. Good work aebrahim!

Regards,
Siku

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 9:55 am

SSE build had the rendering problems too. I rolled back to the official build but it's kind of slow. Looks like I'm going back to 01/01 until that problem gets fixed.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 10:20 am

Well, I got the rendering problem on my 01/01 build so it may be the profile. I'll redo the profile and see if that makes a difference. Not that I have a choice at this point as I didn't backup my old profile.

Warduke · Post by **Warduke** » January 30th, 2004, 10:27 am

I noticed that bug 231371 had been fixed, so I was really hoping you would make another optimized built with this fix. So needless to say I had a big grin on my face when I saw you had done just that.

Up to now, with all my extensions, everything's fine.

Thanks aebrahim.

mikeymike · Post by **mikeymike** » January 30th, 2004, 10:33 am

I've probably missed something, but how come the change from compiling with "-Oxs" to "-O2"?

lordmedikit · Post by **lordmedikit** » January 30th, 2004, 10:38 am

mikeymike wrote:I've probably missed something, but how come the change from compiling with "-Oxs" to "-O2"?

It is a lot quicker than Oxs. The problem is that some people think that it is buggier but I have to say that after about 2 hours of using it on numerous websites I have yet to experience a crash.

Goldzilla · Post by **Goldzilla** » January 30th, 2004, 10:42 am

I've been up and running for about 15 minutes with a new profile. So far, so good. Using the old TBE from 1/17 for now. I was going to fix the nglayout pref but noticed that it's gone now. It looks like there was a lot of cleanup done with the prefs as all of the mail stuff from Mozilla is now gone. Performance seems pretty good (SSE2). We'll see if the rendering thing comes back.

Anyone know if I should add the nglayout param or just leave it missing?