Run results for: OffscreenCanvas vs HTMLCanvasElement drawImage() (w/ Transferable)

Comparing OffscreenCanvas vs HTMLCanvasElement, and investigating the usage of multiple postMessage strategies, from structured cloning of objects to transferable ArrayBuffers.

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.103 Safari/537.36

Browser: Chrome 73

Operating system: Windows 8.1

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: 5 years ago

Test name	Executions per second
drawImage Main Thread	51327.4 Ops/sec
drawImage Worker Thread, String	117422.9 Ops/sec
drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer StructuredClone	92780.0 Ops/sec
drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer Transferable	9360.5 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:


var blob = new Blob([
    `  
  let bitmap = undefined;
  let canvas = undefined;
  let ctx    = undefined;
  let buffer = undefined;

let postAMessage=self.postMessage;

function render()
{
		ctx.clearRect(0,0,640,480);
		ctx.drawImage(bitmap, 0,0);
		requestAnimationFrame(render);
}

self.onmessage = function(ev) {



  if(ev.data.msg === 'bitmap' && canvas != undefined) {
		bitmap = ev.data.imageB;
		console.log("Received an ImageBitmap next!");
		render();
  }

  if(ev.data.msg === 'init' && bitmap != undefined) {
    canvas = ev.data.canvas;
    ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
	console.log("Received a canvas next!");
	render();

  }

  if(ev.data.msg === 'bitmap' && canvas == undefined) {
	console.log("Received a bitmap first!");
	
		bitmap = ev.data.imageB;
  }

  if(ev.data.msg === 'init' && bitmap == undefined) {
	console.log("Received a canvas first!");
	
    canvas = ev.data.canvas;
    ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');

  }
  if(ev.data.msg === 'buffer') {
	console.log("Clearing buffer " + ev.data.msgIndex + "from pool");

  	self.postMessage({msg:'buffer',msgIndex:ev.data.msgIndex});
  }
}
`]);

var myWorker = new Worker(window.URL.createObjectURL(blob));
var buff = new ArrayBuffer(8);
var buffers = [];

//create a pool of buffers
for (let i = 0; i < 30; i++)
{
buffers.push(new ArrayBuffer(100));
buffers[i].isUsed = false;
}

var img = new Image();

function handleMessageFromWorker(msg) {
    console.log('the thread used buffer: ' + msg.data.msgIndex);
	if (msg.data.msg == "buffer")
    {
      buffers[parseInt(msg.data.msgIndex)] = new ArrayBuffer(100);
      buffers[parseInt(msg.data.msgIndex)].isUsed = false;
    }
}

myWorker.addEventListener('message', handleMessageFromWorker);

img.src = "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.google.com";

img.decode().then(() => {createImageBitmap(img).then(Ibitmap => { myWorker.postMessage({imageB: Ibitmap, msg:'bitmap'}, [Ibitmap]);  })});

var canvas =  document.createElement("canvas");
var c2 =  document.createElement("canvas");
c2.width = 640;
c2.height = 480;
c2 = c2.transferControlToOffscreen();

canvas.width = 640;
canvas.height = 480;
c2.width = 640;
c2.height = 480;

var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');

myWorker.postMessage({msg: 'init', canvas: c2}, [c2]);

Tests:

drawImage Main Thread
if (img.width > 0){ ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0); ctx.clearRect(0,0,640,480); }
drawImage Worker Thread, String
if (img.width > 0) myWorker.postMessage("255,0,0");
drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer StructuredClone
if (img.width > 0) myWorker.postMessage(buff);
drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer Transferable
if (img.width > 0) { let buffersFull = true; for (let i = 0; i < buffers.length; i++) { if (!buffers[i].isUsed) {myWorker.postMessage({msg:'buffer', msgIndex:i, buffer:buffers[i]},[buffers[i]]); buffers[i].isUsed = true; buffersFull = false;} }if (buffersFull) console.log("All buffers in the pool are full")}

Run results for: OffscreenCanvas vs HTMLCanvasElement drawImage() (w/ Transferable)

Comparing OffscreenCanvas vs HTMLCanvasElement, and investigating the usage of multiple postMessage strategies, from structured cloning of objects to transferable ArrayBuffers.

drawImage Main Thread

drawImage Worker Thread, String

drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer StructuredClone

drawImage Worker Thread, ArrayBuffer Transferable