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Author Archives: brucedawson
ARM and Lock-Free Programming
I was inspired by the release of Apple’s M1 ARM processor to tweet about the perils of lock-free programming which led to some robust discussion. The discussion went pretty well given the inanity of trying to discuss something as complicated … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
6 Comments
Floating Point in the Browser, Part 3: When x+y=x (y != 0)
A few years ago I did a lot of thinking and writing about floating-point math. It was good fun, and I learned a lot in the process, but sometimes I go a long time without actually using that hard-earned knowledge. … Continue reading
Floating Point in the Browser, Part 2: Bad Epsilon
A few years ago I did a lot of thinking and writing about floating-point math. It was good fun, and I learned a lot in the process, but sometimes I go a long time without actually using that hard-earned knowledge. … Continue reading
Windows Timer Resolution: The Great Rule Change
The behavior of the Windows scheduler changed significantly in Windows 10 2004, in a way that will break a few applications, and there appears to have been no announcement, and the documentation has not been updated. This isn’t the first … Continue reading
Posted in Environment, Investigative Reporting, Performance, Rants
Tagged time resolution, timebeginperiod
32 Comments
Floating Point in the Browser, Part 1: Impossible Expectations
A few years ago I did a lot of thinking and writing about floating-point math. It was good fun, and I learned a lot in the process, but sometimes I go a long time without actually using that hard-earned knowledge. … Continue reading
The Easy Ones – Three Bugs Hiding in the Open
I write a lot about investigations into tricky bugs – CPU defects, kernel bugs, transient 4-GB memory allocations – but most bugs are not that esoteric. Sometimes tracking down a bug is as simple as paying attention to server dashboards, … Continue reading
Posted in Bugs, Code analysis, Code Reliability, Debugging, Floating Point, Linux, Performance
Tagged coding values
23 Comments
GDI leaks and the importance of luck
In May 2019 I was asked to look at a potentially serious Chrome bug. I initially misdiagnosed it as unimportant, thus wasting two valuable weeks, and when I rejoined the investigation it was the number one browser-process crash in Chrome’s … Continue reading
What Outranks Thread Priority?
This investigation started, as so many of mine do, with me minding my own business, not looking for trouble. In this case all I was doing was opening my laptop lid and trying to log on. The first few times … Continue reading
Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, uiforetw, xperf
Tagged laptops, standby, Windows
8 Comments
Big Project Build Times–Chromium
A twitter discussion on build times and source-file sizes got me interested in doing some analysis of Chromium build times. I had some ideas about what I would find (lots of small source files causing much of the build time) … Continue reading
Creating a Public Symbol Server, Easily
I’ve been a big fan of symbol servers for years. They are a part of the Microsoft/Windows ecosystem that is far better than anything I have seen for other operating systems. With Microsoft’s and Chrome’s symbol servers configured I can … Continue reading
