Robohornet is a browser benchmark designed to test performance in web app bottlenecks, especially "DOM, <canvas> API methods, SVG". Paul Irish from Google's Chrome team is in charge of it. He blogged on it here: http://paulirish.com/2012/a-browser-benchmark-that-has-your-back-robohornet/ The Github page is here: https://github.com/robohornet/robohornet Tom's Hardware ran it on desktop and mobile browsers. Firefox 15 came last on all desktop platforms (win7, win8, ubuntu 12.04.1, OSX 10.8.2). Firefox was not tested on Android.

Tom's Hardware benchmark tests: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/robohornet-web-browser-performance,3303.html

Can someone put together a list of the tests we seem to do particularly badly on here?

I wish I knew. The test seems to go on forever in the SVG resizing benchmark.

(In reply to Kyle Huey [:khuey] (khuey@mozilla.com) from comment #3) > I wish I knew. The test seems to go on forever in the SVG resizing > benchmark. Indeed. In the mean time, the Tom's Hardware article has test breakdowns. For Win 7: Chrome 21: http://media.bestofmicro.com/0/D/353821/original/Chrome21Win7.PNG FF 15: http://media.bestofmicro.com/0/H/353825/original/Firefox15Win7.PNG "offsetHeight triggers reflow" stands out.

So, without the SVG benchmark: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9d285bedbc1f Benchmark Status Time Baseline Weight Index Add Rows to Table Completed successfully 54.43ms 49.68ms 6.72% 6.14 Add Columns to Table Completed successfully 93.88ms 45.29ms 5.04% 2.43 Descendant Selector Completed successfully 64.67ms 87.19ms 6.72% 9.06 2D Canvas toDataURL Completed successfully 603.39ms 304.56ms 6.72% 3.39 2D Canvas clearRect Completed successfully 10.71ms 16.73ms 6.72% 10.50 innerHTML Table Completed successfully 752.05ms 283.53ms 6.72% 2.53 Table scrolling Completed successfully 2182.34ms 964.37ms 6.72% 2.97 Resize columns Completed successfully 3794.38ms 2739.90ms 6.72% 4.85 SVG resize Skipped - 502.73ms 6.72% - ES5 Property Accessors Completed successfully 231.82ms 89.57ms 3.36% 1.30 Calculate primes Completed successfully 148.63ms 96.83ms 3.36% 2.19 Argument instantiation Completed successfully 30.18ms 315.13ms 6.72% 70.20 Animated GIFS Completed successfully 101.05ms 127.69ms 0.84% 1.06 offsetHeight triggers reflow Completed successfully 4537.98ms 723.69ms 10.08% 1.61 DOM Range API Completed successfully 109.09ms 103.79ms 3.36% 3.20 Write to localStorage Completed successfully 46.87ms 49.84ms 6.72% 7.15 Read from localStorage Completed successfully 34.73ms 33.93ms 6.72% 6.57 Raw score 98880.88 Chrome 21.0.1180.89 m Benchmark Status Time Baseline Weight Index Add Rows to Table Completed successfully 42.70ms 49.68ms 6.72% 7.82 Add Columns to Table Completed successfully 57.05ms 45.29ms 5.04% 4.00 Descendant Selector Completed successfully 55.55ms 87.19ms 6.72% 10.55 2D Canvas toDataURL Completed successfully 273.30ms 304.56ms 6.72% 7.49 2D Canvas clearRect Completed successfully 16.43ms 16.73ms 6.72% 6.84 innerHTML Table Completed successfully 272.09ms 283.53ms 6.72% 7.01 Table scrolling Completed successfully 1055.66ms 964.37ms 6.72% 6.14 Resize columns Completed successfully 1584.73ms 2739.90ms 6.72% 11.62 SVG resize Skipped - 502.73ms 6.72% - ES5 Property Accessors Completed successfully 22.40ms 89.57ms 3.36% 13.44 Calculate primes Completed successfully 120.48ms 96.83ms 3.36% 2.70 Argument instantiation Completed successfully 243.89ms 315.13ms 6.72% 8.69 Animated GIFS Completed successfully 380.46ms 127.69ms 0.84% 0.28 offsetHeight triggers reflow Completed successfully 495.35ms 723.69ms 10.08% 14.73 DOM Range API Completed successfully 113.44ms 103.79ms 3.36% 3.08 Write to localStorage Completed successfully 38.80ms 49.84ms 6.72% 8.64 Read from localStorage Completed successfully 20.87ms 33.93ms 6.72% 10.93 Raw score 30692.69 "offsetHeight triggers reflow" and "ES5 Property Accessors" are by far the worst performers on our side, we're 10x slower than Chrome. We're 3x slower on the toDataURL benchmark and the innerHTML table benchmark. On the bright side, we're 8x faster than Chrome on the argument instantiation benchmark, 3x faster on animated GIF scrolling, and nominally faster on clearRect and DOM range.

Add Columns to Table is not great for us either. OK, I'll file some bugs blocking this. Chickens coming home to roost with the JS folks on the ES5 accessor stuff. ;)

The canvas clearRect test is totally bogus. It clears a canvas it never even bothered to draw to, so it just tests how fast we can call into C++ and return back to JS.

As I mentioned to them on their github issue tracker, their accesors test might be a lie. It very often fails to make any use of the values it reads from the accessors, so an aggressive optimizer could entirely eliminate the loops. V8 might be smart enough to do this (in my experience V8 is *not* 10x faster than SpiderMonkey at ES5 accessors)

our svg tests need an developer contact and are probably outdated, this might be a good solution to update our svg tests.

> It very often fails to make any use of the values it reads > from the accessors, so an aggressive optimizer could entirely eliminate the > loops. This is a *classic* microbenchmark pitfall. Fun fact: V8's "regexp" test runs many RegExp.exec() calls but never inspects their return values (which is an array). So if your JS engine can detect that you can avoid creating that return value (which is an array, and so expensive to create) and run the test much faster.

would we want to run this in talos?

Not with the current quality of the benchmark.