Re: [whatwg] Proposal: navigator.cores

On May 3, 2014, at 10:49 AM, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com> wrote:

> Over on blink-dev, we've been discussing [1] adding a property to navigator
> that reports the number of cores [2].  As far as I can tell, this
> functionality exists in every other platform (including iOS and Android).
> Some of the use cases for this feature have been discussed previously on
> this mailing list [3] and rejected in favor of a more complex system,
> perhaps similar to Grand Central Dispatch [4].  Others have raised concerns
> that exposing the number of cores could lead to increased fidelity of
> fingerprinting [5].
> 
> My view is that the fingerprinting risks are minimal.  This information is
> already available to web sites that wish to spend a few seconds probing
> your machine [6].  Obviously, exposing this property makes that easier and
> more accurate, which is why it's useful for developers.
> 
> IMHO, a more complex worker pool system would be valuable, but most systems
> that have such a worker pool system also report the number of hardware
> threads available.  Examples:
> 
> C++:
> std::thread::hardware_concurrency();
> 
> Win32:
> GetSystemInfo returns dwNumberOfProcessors
> 
> POSIX:
> sysctl returns HW_AVAILCPU or HW_NCPU
> 
> Java:
> Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors();
> 
> Python:
> multiprocessing.cpu_count()
> 
> In fact, the web was the only platform I could find that didn't make the
> number of cores available to developers.

FWIW, this property has been added to WebKit [1] and Blink [2] although that's not an indication of any browser actually shipping it for WebKit.

[1] http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/169017
[2] https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/blink?revision=175629&view=revision

- R. Niwa

Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2014 00:19:42 UTC