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Comment by feross | Hacker News Reader

We recently made a one-line change that massively reduced GPU usage, specifically:

- Intel integrated graphics: 60% reduction

- AMD Radeon: 40% reduction

- Apple M1: 10% reduction

What was the change? We removed "opacity: 85%" from the <canvas> element. We were using opacity to slightly darken the animation but now we just darken the texture image directly.

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Would love to read more about this.

We just massively reduced GPU utilization on Wormhole for a second time (as of May 12). Give it a try and let me know if you still have issues.

GPU utilization when window is full screen, 4K resolution:

Chrome:

  - Radeon: 70% -> 15%

  - M1: 65% -> 29%

Firefox:

  - Radeon: 60% -> 8%

  - M1: 55% -> 23%

Safari:

  - 15% Radeon + 75% Intel -> 8% Radeon + 8% Intel

  - M1: 75% -> 35%

A bit more detail: We're running into the limits of WebGL. It seems just rendering a white screen at 60fps at 4K resolution is enough to make people's fans turn on.

So we reduce the frame-rate when the wormhole is not warping (render every 3rd frame). We also lower the resolution and scale it up.

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