Firefox/Win64

Objective

Make 64-bit Firefox the default version for new and existing eligible users to reduce our OOM crash rate, increase performance, and improve security (ASLR).

Users are eligible for a 64-bit default if they are running 64-bit Windows 7+ and have at least 2 GB RAM. For users with less than 4 GB of physical memory, there is a trade-off between the larger virtual address space and the overhead of 64-bit code. 2 GB RAM is Microsoft's minimum memory requirement for Windows 7 and 10.

Schedule

• 2014 Q3
  • [DONE] August 8 - Chrome's 64-bit announcements: Mac and Windows
• 2015 Q2
  • [DONE] May 4 - Firefox 41: Drop support for binary XPCOM components
• 2015 Q4
  • [DONE] October 8 - Announced NPAPI to be removed by end of 2016: NPAPI Plugins in Firefox
  • [DONE] December 15 - Firefox 43: Release 64-bit Firefox builds
• 2016 Q3
  • [DONE] July 20 - Announced NPAPI to be removed in Firefox 52: Reducing Adobe Flash Usage in Firefox
  • [DONE] August 29 - Web team will start redesigning download page redesign for 64-bit
  • [DONE] September 23 - Web team will start A/B test of new download page
• 2016 Q4
  • [DONE] October 7 - Web team will complete A/B test of new download page
  • [DONE] October - Drop support for non-Flash NPAPI plugins in Nightly 52 (bug 1269807)
  • [DONE] October - Create dashboards for 64-bit rollout criteria
  • [DONE] November 24 - Make 64-bit the stub installer's default in Nightly 53 (bug 797208). The 64-bit default did not ride the trains with 53. The 64-bit installer option shipped in 54.
• 2017 Q1
  • [DONE] January 14 - Announce ctypes deprecation for Firefox 53: Preventing Add-ons & Third-party Software From Loading DLLs Into Firefox
  • [DONE] January - Forbid ctypes in AMO's add-on validator (for Firefox 53)
  • [DONE] Fix Flash sandbox bugs
  • [DONE] March 7 - Firefox 52 release
  • [DONE] March - Change Aurora 54's installer default back to 32-bit (bug 1342347)
  • [DONE] March - Google Hangouts will be broken until Google launches plugin-free WebRTC Hangouts. ETA = "soon".
• 2017 Q2
  • [AT RISK] April 12 - Enabled Flash async drawing in Aurora 54 (bug 1340934)
  • [DONE] April 18 - Firefox 53 release (with 64-bit installer option)
  • [DONE] May 2 - Google began migrating 32-bit Chrome users (with more than 4GB RAM) to 64-bit Chrome 58.
  • [DONE] May 8 - Flash release with fix for acceleration regression bug 1359886.
  • [ON TRACK] June 13 - Firefox 54 release
  • [AT RISK] June 13 - Flash 26 (York) release should fix zero-sized Flash bug 1348629.
    • [PROPOSED] Ask Softvision to test async drawing with Flash 26 release and then re-enable async drawing for 32-bit Flash.
  • [PROPOSED] June 22 - Started Funnelcake experiment to compare 32-bit vs 64-bit for eligible Release 54 users: 120K users in de, es-ES, fr, pt-BR, and ru. (bug 1309844 and bug 1309847)
  • [PROPOSED] June - Write technical blog post about 64-bit installer default in 55.
• 2017 H2
  • [PROPOSED] July - Publish technical blog post after 54 Funnelcake experiment. Point to 54's 64-bit full installer.
  • [PROPOSED] July - Add section about 64-bit migration to Ryan's 56 release announcement?
  • [ON TRACK] August 8 - Firefox 55 release (with 64-bit installer default)
  • [ON TRACK] October 3 - Firefox 56 release
  • [PROPOSED] October - Migrate eligible 32-bit Firefox users to 64-bit (bug 1274659) with a 56.0.1 dot release (so we can throttle migration).

Release Criteria

• Win64 release criteria dashboard: Release channel
• Win64 release criteria dashboard: Beta channel
• Win64 release criteria dashboard: Nightly channel
• Win64 total URIs loaded should be greater than or equal to WOW64
• Win64 total domains loaded should be greater than or equal to WOW64
• Win64 total tabs opened should be greater than or equal to WOW64
• Win64 crash rate should be less than or equal to WOW64
  • The frequency of new users experiencing any Firefox or content crash in the first two weeks of using Firefox should be lower than or equal to WOW64 (WIP to visualize this)
  • The percentage of Firefox users who experience more than one crash per week of active usage should be greater than or equal to WOW64 (WIP to visualize this)
• Win64 engagement ratio should be greater than or equal to WOW64 engagement ratio
• Win64 3 week user retention should be greater than or equal to WOW64 (part of funnelcake experiment)
• Stub installer success rate with Win64 should be greater than or equal to WOW64
• Win64 performance benchmarks should be faster than or equal to WOW64

Links

• Meeting notes
• Trello board
• Stub Installer test plan
• 32-bit crash stats
• 64-bit crash stats
• % Win32/WOW64/Win64 Firefox users:
  • 2015
    • 32.3% Win32 (32-bit Firefox on Win32 OS)
    • 66% WoW64 (32-bit Firefox on Win64 OS)
    • 1.7% Win64 (64-bit Firefox on Win64 OS)
  • 2016 Q4
    • 25% Win32 (32-bit Firefox on Win32 OS)
    • 72% WoW64 (32-bit Firefox on Win64 OS)
    • 3% Win64 (64-bit Firefox on Win64 OS)
• Proportion of Win64 OS users by RAM:
  • > 3 GiB = 91.21%
  • > 3.8 GiB = 80.73%
  • > 4 GiB = 37.86%
  • Graph

Bugs

• Win64 rollout bug 1340936

No results.

0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);

• Bugs blocking Flash async drawing bug 1340934. These bugs do not block the 64-bit rollout.

No results.

0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);

Team

Role	Contact
Product Management	Romain Testard
Engineering	David Parks (Flash sandbox), Matt Howell and Robert Strong (installer), Stéphanie Ouillon (Flash sandbox review)
QA	Ryan VanderMeulen
UX	Michael Verdi (Firefox), Jon Petto (Mozilla.org)
Release Management	Sylvestre Ledru
Release Engineering	Chris AtLee
Firefox Program Management	Chris Peterson
Mozilla.org Program Management	Jennifer Bersch
Add-ons	Jorge Villalobos