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+. 32-bit Firefox running on 64-bit Windows can access about 3,800 MiB of virtual address space (4 GiB minus overhead from physical memory reserved for the OS and BIOS). For users with less than 4 GiB of physical memory, there is a trade-off between the larger virtual address space and the overhead of 64-bit code. We have decided to remove any minimum memory requirement for 64-bit Firefox because we don't want to withhold the security benefits of ASLR. Also, 2 GiB RAM is Microsoft's minimum memory requirement for Windows 7 through 10.

Schedule

• 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 12 - Start of Nightly 52 development cycle.
  • [AT RISK] September 23 - Web team will complete redesign of download page.
  • [AT RISK] September 23 - Web team will start A/B test of new download page.
• 2016 Q4
  • [AT RISK] 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)
  • [ON TRACK] October - Make 64-bit Firefox the default in the stub installer for all eligible users in Nightly 53. (bug 797208)
  • [AT RISK] October - Announce ctypes deprecation.
  • [AT RISK] October - Fix Flash sandbox bugs.
  • [AT RISK] October - Create dashboards for 64-bit rollout criteria (below).
  • [ON TRACK] November 7 - Start of Nightly 53 development cycle.
  • [PROPOSED] December - Forbid ctypes in AMO's add-on validator. (Firefox 51 or 52?)
• 2017 Q1
  • [ON TRACK] January 23 - Start of Beta 52 release cycle.
  • [PROPOSED] January - Run Funnelcake test to compare 32-bit vs 64-bit for eligible Beta 52 users.
  • [PROPOSED] March 7 - Firefox 52 release.
  • [PROPOSED] March - Run Funnelcake test to compare 32-bit vs 64-bit for eligible Release 52 users.
  • [PROPOSED] March - Announce 64-bit default for new installs for Firefox 53.
• 2017 Q2
  • [PROPOSED] April 18 - Firefox 53 release with the 64-bit default!
• 2017 H2
  • [PROPOSED] Auto-upgrade existing eligible 32-bit Firefox users to 64-bit. (bug 1274659)

Release Criteria

• Win64 indicators dashboard
• Win64 active ticks should be greater than or equal to WOW64
• 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
• Win64 engagement ratio should be greater than or equal to WOW64 engagement ratio (TODO: copy e10s dashboard)
• Win64 performance benchmarks should be faster than or equal to WOW64

Links

• Meeting notes
• Trello board
• Stub Installer test plan
• % 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
• 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 (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