Animation and The Role of GPU – A Performance factor

Animation and The Role of GPU – A Performance factor

Just take a look into the given CSS which rotates your div by 360deg

.box_rotate {
 -webkit-transform: rotate(360deg); 
 -moz-transform: rotate(360deg); 
 -ms-transform: rotate(360deg); 
 -o-transform: rotate(360deg); 
 transform: rotate(360deg);
}

Code Example – JSFiddle

Have you ever wondered what happens in your computer when we see even a simple animation?

Your computer algorithm calculates every pixel and performs CPU intensive operation over each pixel. Ok what such operations it does ?. It calculates every pixel and performs Discrete Fourier Transformation on each pixel of the image. If your image is 512X512  = 2,62,144 pixels and the algorithms operates several frames per second, like 50 frames per second which depends upon the type of hardware/algorithm being used. It operates every pixel several times per second ( like every pixel 60 times per second ) now image for an image with size 512X512 = 2,62,144pixels and each pixel operated 60 times per second this gives you unbelievably huge number.

Assume that you operated only 1 second,

2,62,144 * 60 = 1,57,28,640 times and these many times it is not just a simple operation, they may apply Fourier transformation on each pixel. 

Another important factor to note that the Image rotation, Image scaling or any graphics related operations the the matrix calculations will come into picture. The rotation matrix and the image matrix will be multiplied to get the resulting image

rotation matrix
rotation matrix

An image matrix will be a huge one, like 512 x 512 x 3 for a given 512X512 image. the 3 in matrix indicates image is RGB coloured. It is not required to explain how matrix multiplications are CPU extensive, Theoretically, matrix-matrix multiplication uses O(N^3) operations on O(N^2) data

Comparison of GPU Matrix Multiplication operation over CPU

Why GPU and Why not CPU.

GPU are specifically made for performing graphics operations like moving pixels and applying transforms. Since CPU will be doing many more tasks like file operations, audio, calculations etc it is better to separate out your animated objects and give it to a different GPU layer. Imagine in the screen of 1024X800, somewhere some 200X100 size portion is animating, rather than giving 1024X800 space and find 200×100 space and then operate , it is nice trick to create separate layer of 200×100 space and perform animation independently in that layer.

So the load on your CPU will be reduced and the performance of the system will be improved. The difference between CSS3 and jquery animations are , CSS3 utilises GPU but jquery doesn’t, there another javascript based latest framework available called GSAP which is 20x faster than query. 

 

Comparison of jquery, CSS and GSAP Animation Performance :

http://codepen.io/GreenSock/pen/srfxA

Check our another article – how-to-make-you-web-site-faster-html-javascript-tricks

Reference : https://css-tricks.com/myth-busting-css-animations-vs-javascript/