CPU Performance API

[nickie]

Introduction

The CPU Performance API aims to expose to web applications some information about how powerful the user device is.

This API targets applications that will use this information to provide an improved user experience, possibly in combination with the Compute Pressure API, which provides information about the user device’s CPU pressure/utilization and allows applications to react to changes in CPU pressure. E.g., video-conferencing applications or video games may use this information to decide if advanced video effects can be rendered; all types of applications may use it to decide whether to attempt running AI tasks locally or delegate to the server, etc.

Exposing detailed CPU information is not an option, as it violates user privacy by allowing fingerprinting. The solution adopted in this proposal addresses privacy concerns similarly to the Device Memory API, by exposing only a small integer number, indicating the user device's "performance tier".

Read the complete Explainer.

Feedback

I welcome feedback in this thread, but encourage you to file bugs against the Explainer.

[jlai-figma]

Figma is interested in the proposed API and would find it useful! We could add it as a tag in our monitoring so that we can better understand how Figma performance changes across different performance tiers. This would help us have a more detailed understanding of performance and more effectively root cause changes in performance metrics. It would also enable us to choose specific optimizations and product experiences based on performance tier. As one example, we could configure the level of rendering fidelity based on the performance tier.

[yoavweiss]

It sounds like y'all have enough support to move the incubation to its own repo. Feel free to transfer the repo to me, and I can take care of the rest.