Re: [whatwg] Proposal: navigator.cores

On Sat, May 03, 2014 at 10:49:00AM -0700, Adam Barth 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].

navigator.cores seems to invite developers to try to write web apps
that make local decisions about the scheduling of work on cores when
they're missing important essential knowledge about the global context:
cores may not be equally fast, energy-efficient, or available; global
scheduling decisions may be more sophisticated than, or in opposition to
your local scheduling decisions.

I think that "a more complex system," such as Grand Central Dispatch, is
probably more effective and less complicated than each web app trying
independently, without any real information, to optimize its use of
cores.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung@pobox.com    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981

Received on Monday, 5 May 2014 18:11:12 UTC