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 4+ GiB RAM. 32-bit Firefox running on 64-bit Windows OS can use up to 3,800 MiB of virtual address space (4 GiB minus overhead from virtual address space fragmentation). Thus users with less than 3,800 MiB of physical memory would see little benefit from using 64-bit Firefox.

Plan

• 2015
  • [DONE] Firefox 41 - Drop support for binary XPCOM components.
  • [DONE] Firefox 43 - Release 64-bit Firefox builds.
• 2016
  • [DONE] August 29 - Web team will start redesigning download page redesign for 64-bit.
  • [ON TRACK] September 12 - Start of Nightly 52 development cycle.
  • [AT RISK] September - Create dashboards for 64-bit rollout criteria (below).
  • [ON TRACK] September 23 - Web team will complete redesign of download page.
  • [PROPOSED] September 23 - Web team will start A/B test of new download page.
  • [PROPOSED] October 7 - Web team will complete A/B test of new download page.
  • [AT RISK] October - Fix Flash sandbox bugs.
  • [PROPOSED] October - Drop support for non-Flash NPAPI plugins in Nightly 52. (bug 1269807)
  • [AT RISK] October - Announce ctypes deprecation.
  • [ON TRACK] November 7 - End of Nightly 52 development cycle.
  • [PROPOSED] November 8 - Make 64-bit Firefox the default in the stub installer for all eligible users in Nightly 53. (bug 797208)
  • [PROPOSED] December - Forbid ctypes in AMO's add-on validator.
• 2017
  • [ON TRACK] January 23 - Start of Beta 52 release cycle.
  • [PROPOSED] January - Run Optimizely/Funnelcake test to compare 32-bit vs 64-bit for some eligible Beta 52 users.
  • [PROPOSED] ~February - Announce 64-bit default for new installs.
  • [PROPOSED] March 7 - Firefox 52 release.
  • [PROPOSED] H2 - Auto-upgrade existing eligible 32-bit Firefox users to 64-bit. (bug 1274659)

Release Criteria

• Win64 crash rate should be less than or equal to WOW64 crash rate:
  • OOM crash rate dashboard (TODO)
  • Non-OOM crash rate dashboard (TODO)
  • Flash crash rate dashboard (TODO)
• Win64 engagement ratio should be greater than or equal to WOW64 engagement ratio:
  • Engagement Ratio dashboard (TODO: copy e10s dashboard)
• Win64 performance benchmarks should be faster than or equal to WOW64 performance benchmarks:
  • Kraken dashboard (TBD: waiting for jmaher or wlach to answer questions about Talos' win7 vs win8 hardware configs)

Links

• Meeting notes
• Trello board
• Win64 market analysis (2015)
  • 32.3% of Windows DAUs are running 32-bit Firefox on Win32 OS.
  • 66% of Windows DAUs are running 32-bit Firefox on Win64 OS.
  • 1.7% of Windows DAUs are running 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
• Chrome's 64-bit announcements: Mac and Windows (August 2014)

Bugs

• Win64 bug dependency tree

No results.

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

• Sandbox bugs (sbwn1)

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 (Security)
QA	Ryan VanderMeulen
UX	Michael Verdi (Firefox), Holly Habstritt (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