Last month, we discussed a potential fix for the error that was preventing CrXPRT 2 testers from successfully completing battery life tests on systems running Chrome v89.x and later. Since then, we’ve been testing an updated, unpublished version of the app package across several Chromebook models to ensure that the new build is stable and produces consistent results. We’re happy to report that our testing was successful, and we’ve published the new CrXPRT build (v1.2.0.0) in the Chrome Web Store and it is live as of 12:45 PM EDT today.
Note
that it might take some time for the update to appear on your Chromebook and,
once it does, you might have to manually approve the update notice.
Neither
the tests nor the method of calculating the overall score and battery-life
score in this new build have changed, so results are comparable with previous
CrXPRT 2 results.
We appreciate everyone’s patience while we found a solution to the error. If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!
Last
week, we shared some new details
about the changes we’re likely to make in WebXPRT 4, and a rough target date
for publishing a preview build. This week, we’re excited to share an early
preview of the new results viewer tool that we plan to release in conjunction
with WebXPRT 4. We hope the tool will help testers and analysts access the
wealth of WebXPRT test results in our database in an efficient, productive, and
enjoyable way. We’re still ironing out many of the details, so some aspects of
what we’re showing today might change, but we’d like to give you an idea of
what to expect.
The screenshot below shows the tool’s default display. In this example, the viewer displays over 650 sample results—from a wide range of device types—that we’re currently using as placeholder data. The viewer will include several sorting and filtering options, such as device type, hardware specs such as browser type and processor vendor, the source of the result, etc.
Each
vertical bar in the graph represents the overall score of single test result,
and the graph presents the scores in order from lowest to highest. To view an
individual result in detail, the user simply hovers over and selects the bar
representing the result. The bar turns dark blue, and the dark blue banner at
the bottom of the viewer displays details about that result.
In the example above, the banner shows the overall score (250) and the score’s percentile rank (85th) among the scores in the current display. In the final version of the viewer, the banner will also display the device name of the test system, along with basic hardware disclosure information. Selecting the Run details button will let users see more about the run’s individual workload scores.
We’re
still working on a way for users to pin or save specific runs. This would let
users easily find the results that interest them, or possibly select multiple
runs for a side-by-side comparison.
We’re excited about this new tool, and we look forward to sharing more details here in the blog as we get closer to taking it live. If you have any questions or comments about the results viewer, please feel free to contact us!
The WebXPRT 4 development process is
far enough along that we’d like to share more about changes we are likely to
make and a rough target date for publishing a preview build. While some of the
details below will probably change, this post should give readers a good sense
of what to expect.
General changes
Some of the non-workload changes in
WebXPRT 4 relate to our typical benchmark update process, and a few result
directly from feedback we received from the WebXPRT tech press survey.
We will update the aesthetics of the WebXPRT UI to make
WebXPRT 4 visually distinct from older versions. We do not anticipate
significantly changing the flow of the UI.
We will update content in some of the workloads to
reflect changes in everyday technology. For instance, we will upgrade most
of the photos in the photo processing workloads to higher resolutions.
In response to a request from tech press survey
respondents, we are considering adding a looping function to the
automation scripts.
We are investigating the possibility of shortening the
benchmark by reducing the default number of iterations from seven to five.
We will only make this change if we can ensure that five iterations produce
consistently low score variance.
Changes to existing workloads
Photo
Enhancement. This workload applies three effects
to two photos each (six photos total). It tests HTML5 Canvas, Canvas 2D, and
JavaScript performance. The only change we are considering is adding
higher-resolution photos.
Organize Album Using AI. This workload currently uses the ConvNetJS neural network library to complete two tasks: (1) organizing five images and (2) classifying the five images in an album. We are planning to replace ConvNetJS with WebAssembly (WASM) for both tasks and are considering upgrading the images to higher resolutions.
Stock Option Pricing. This workload calculates and displays graphic views of a stock portfolio using Canvas, SVG, and dygraph.js. The only change we are considering is combining it with the Sales Graphs workload (below).
Sales Graphs. This workload provides a web-based application displaying multiple views of sales data. Sales Graphs exercises HTML5 Canvas and SVG performance. The only change we are considering is combining it with the Stock Option Pricing workload (above).
Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan. This workload uses ASM.js to sync notes, extract text from a scanned receipt using optical character recognition (OCR), and add the scanned text to a spending report. We are planning to replace ASM.js with WASM for the Notes task and with WASM-based Tesseract for the OCR task.
Online Homework. This workload uses regex, arrays, strings, and Web Workers to review DNA and spell-check an essay. We are not planning to change this workload.
Possible new workloads
Natural Language Processing (NLP). We are considering the addition of an NLP workload using ONNX Runtime and/or TensorFlowJS. The workload would use Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to answer questions about a given text. Similar use cases are becoming more prevalent in conversational bot systems, domain-specific document search tools, and various other educational applications.
Message Scrolling. We are considering developing a new workload that would use an Angular or React.js to scroll through hundreds of messages. We’ll share more about this possible workload as we firm up the details.
The release timeline
We hope to publish a WebXPRT 4
preview build in the second half of November, with a general release before the
end of the year. If it looks as though that timeline will change significantly,
we’ll provide an update here in the blog as soon as possible.
We’re very grateful for all the
input we received during the WebXPRT 4 planning process. If you have any
questions about the details we’ve shared above, please feel free to ask!
For
the past few months, we’ve been recommending that CrXPRT 2
testers not use the battery life test until we find a solution to a recurring
error on Chrome v89.x and later. The error prevents the test from completing
and producing a battery life estimate. Sometimes, the CrXPRT battery life test stops
running after only a few workload iterations, while at other times, it almost
reaches completion before producing the error.
We are cautiously optimistic that we’ve identified both the problem and a potential fix. We believe the problem stems from fluctuations in the time it takes the benchmark to communicate with Chrome to collect and store battery life information. While we haven’t identified the root cause of the fluctuations, adjusting the CrXPRT code to make it less sensitive to the fluctuations appears to be an effective fix. We have incorporated those adjustments into an updated, unpublished version of the app package, and we can now complete CrXPRT 2 battery life tests on Chrome v89.x and later with no failures.
We
are calling this a potential fix because we’re still testing across several
different Chromebook models to ensure consistency. In some testing, the
variance in estimated battery life results has been a little higher than we
like, so we’re taking time to determine whether that variance is present across
all systems or on only specific hardware.
We’d like to apologize once again for the inconvenience that this error is causing CrXPRT 2 testers. As soon as we better understand the viability of the current fix as a long-term update, we’ll let you know!
During
recent Windows 11 HDXPRT 4 compatibility testing,
we noticed that Adobe now requires a user ID to download the free Adobe
Photoshop Elements 2020 trial. Previously, testers could download the trial
without setting up an account. While setting up an Adobe account is free, this
change might inconvenience some HDXPRT 4 testers. Unfortunately, we don’t
currently know of a way around it. We apologize for the hassle!
Last week, we discussed the upcoming Windows 11 GA launch on October 5, and our hope is that the transition period from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will go smoothly for the three XPRTs that run on Windows 10, HDXPRT 4, TouchXPRT 2016, and AIXPRT. We’re happy to report that so far, we’ve been able to install HDXPRT 4 and TouchXPRT 2016 on the latest stable preview of Windows 11 without any problems. For TouchXPRT 2016, we successfully installed the benchmark using both available methods—directly from the Microsoft Store and through the manual sideload process—and ran it without issues.
We’re
still testing Windows 11 compatibility with the AIXPRT OpenVINO, TensorFlow,
and TensorRT test packages, and will share our findings here in the blog as
soon as possible. Also, because Microsoft might still publish through the
stable preview channel Windows 11 changes that interfere with the HDXPRT 4 or
TouchXPRT 2016 installation or testing processes, we’ll continue to verify each
benchmark’s Windows 11 compatibility up through and beyond launch day.
If
you’re conducting your own HDXPRT 4, TouchXPRT 2016, or AIXPRT testing on the
Windows 11 beta, you could encounter issues with newly published updates before
we do due to the timing of our update cycles. You could also run into problems
that are specific to your test gear. In either case, please don’t assume that
we already know about the problem. Let us know!
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