Investigate GPU rasterization

[nathansobo]

I've been following the Chromium graphics discussion list and they've been talking about GPU accelerated rasterization. Curious if this is something we can enable in Atom (if it isn't already) and what the benefits would be.

http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/chromium-graphics/how-to-get-gpu-rasterization

/cc @zcbenz

[zcbenz]

Currently it is only enabled on Android > 4.4.3, there is a --force-gpu-rasterization flag but only available on Android too. After some searches in the issues list I think it is just not ready on other platforms.

[nathansobo]

Thanks for checking that out.

[nstepien]

You can enable this on the desktop too in Canary via chrome://flags/#enable-gpu-rasterization
I think this is worth another investigation.

[nathansobo]

@MayhemYDG I just checked it out in Chrome 40 and at least on OS X it's not available:

[nstepien]

That's why I specifically mentioned "in Canary".

[nathansobo]

@MayhemYDG Oh sorry I missed that!

[nstepien]

So now that Atom is on Chrome 41, can we access flags somehow to enable gpu rasterization?

[postcasio]

You can start atom with atom --force-gpu-rasterization to enable it.

[YurySolovyov]

not sure if that placebo effect, but it seems to work smoother, probably need to profile to be sure.

[kevinsawicki]

@nathansobo is this still something to investigate or can this be closed?

[nathansobo]

@zcbenz Is this enabled by default now? It's unclear to me whether options that are enabled by default in Chrome need to be explicitly enabled in Electron.

[simurai]

Followed the steps here.

So in my case it's "off (device) - not supported on the device". I'm on a MBP (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012)

[nathansobo]

As soon as @zcbenz can confirm that there's nothing more to do to enable GPU rasterization when it's supported on the underlying platform, I'm happy to close this. Until then, I personally would like to keep it open as a reminder.

[anaisbetts]

You can check this with the following code:

bw = require('remote').require('browser-window')
b = new bw({width:500, height: 500})
b.loadUrl('chrome://gpu')

Whether it's on or not depends on all kinds of factors - we actually explicitly force GPU rasterization in the Slack app because it makes a difference on OS X

[limoragni]

If you are lazy like me you can go to the console and use window.location.href = "chrome://gpu/" to load the GPU info screen. I have a Macbook Pro mid 2015 and have it disabled. Any ideas why? Is there any downsides on explicitly forcing GPU rasterization? Would I benefit from this when using video and svg?

[YurySolovyov]

@limoragni it should print reasons of disabling features a little below (shot from Chrome, not Atom)

[limoragni]

@YurySolovyov The reason is the same than you screenshot. It says that its disabled by command line or about:flags. Isn't supposed to be enabled by default?

[YurySolovyov]

@limoragni maybe file a bug to chrome then?

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