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 strictly more than 2 GB RAM (so 3 GB is effectively the minimum memory requirement). 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
- 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
- [DONE] 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.
- [DONE] June 13 - Firefox 54 release
- [DONE] June 13 - Flash 26 (York) release should fix zero-sized Flash bug 1348629.
- [DONE] 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)
- [DONE] June - Write technical blog post about 64-bit installer default in 55.
- 2017 Q3
- [DONE] July - Added section about 64-bit migration to Ryan's 56 release announcement.
- [DONE] August 8 - Firefox 55 release (with 64-bit installer default)
- [DONE] August 14 - Published technical blog post after 54 Funnelcake experiment: 64-bit Firefox is the new default on 64-bit Windows
- [DONE] September 5 - Migrated 100% of eligible 32-bit Firefox Beta users to 64-bit Firefox 56.0b9. We found and fixed some 64-bit crashes like Kaspersky bug 1268470, Quick Heal bug 1347867, and Lenovo bug 1369361.
- 2017 Q4
- [DONE] October 3 - Firefox 56 release
- [PROPOSED] October ~5 - Migrate 1% of eligible 32-bit Firefox users to 64-bit Firefox 56.0.1. bug 1274659
- [PROPOSED] October ~16 - Migrate X% of eligible 32-bit Firefox users to 64-bit 56.0.x. bug 1274659
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
Migration Opt-Out
Users running 32-bit Firefox on Win64 OS with at least 2 GB RAM will be automatically upgraded/migrated to 64-bit Firefox 56.0.1. 32-bit Firefox users that do not wish to be migrated to 64-bit Firefox can opt-out of the migration setting a Windows registry key (added in bug 1386176) as described below.
If you have already been migrated to 64-bit Firefox 56.0.1 but prefer to run 32-bit Firefox, you can download 32-bit Windows Firefox 56.0.1 and re-install. Firefox will not attempt to migrate 32-bit users running version 56.0.1 or later!
Instructions for creating the migration opt-out registry key:
- To disable migration for all Firefox installations on a client system for all users, create the following registry entry:
- Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\32to64DidMigrate
- Value Type: DWORD (32 bit) Value
- Value Name: Never
- Value: 1
- To disable migration for all Firefox installations on a client system only for the current user, create the following registry entry:
- Path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\32to64DidMigrate
- Value Type: DWORD (32 bit) Value
- Value Name: Never
- Value: 1
- To disable migration for a single Firefox installation on a client system for all users, create the following registry entry:
- Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\32to64DidMigrate
- Value Type: DWORD (32 bit) Value
- Value Name: <Windows path to the installation directory without a trailing backslash> (Important: do NOT include a trailing backslash!)
- example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
- Value: 1
- To disable migration for a single Firefox installation on a client system only for the current user, create the following registry entry:
- Path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\32to64DidMigrate
- Value Type: DWORD (32 bit) Value
- Value Name: <Windows path to the installation directory without a trailing backslash> (Important: do NOT include a trailing backslash!)
- example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
- Value: 1
Links
- Meeting notes
- Stub Installer test plan
- Proportion of Win64 OS users by RAM:
- > 3 GiB = 91.21%
- > 3.8 GiB = 80.73%
- > 4 GiB = 37.86%
- Graph
- Win64 crash queries
Bugs
No results.
0 Total; 0 Open (0%); 0 Resolved (0%); 0 Verified (0%);
ID | Priority | Summary | Whiteboard | Keywords | Assigned to |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1420251 | P2 | Firefox crashes at startup with Lenovo OneKey Theater on 64-bit Windows 7 | crash | ||
1347867 | P3 | Crash in CrashReporter::OOPInit (Quick Heal Antivirus SCDETOUR.DLL) | inj+ [AV:Quick Heal] | crash, regression |
2 Total; 2 Open (100%); 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 |