In an official blog post, Microsoft is touting Internet Explorer 11’s ability to utilize graphics hardware to offer a 45% faster image load while on the new Windows 8.1 operating system. Microsoft is also touting 40% less memory consumption over previous versions of Internet Explorer.
“Internet Explorer 11 and Windows Store Apps on Windows 8.1 offload parts of the image decoding pipeline to the graphics hardware, resulting in up to 45% faster image load, up to 40% lower memory consumption, and improved battery life. To improve the performance of loading JPG images, IE11 has streamlined its JPG decoding by moving some steps of the decoding process directly to the GPU where it can be done significantly faster and in parallel,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.
With Internet Explorer 11, JPG image decoding work is done between the CPU and the GPU. This allows for a 45% increase in loading JPG images and 40% less memory consumption for IE11. “IE11 decodes the JPG image into the chroma subsampled YCbCr color space on the CPU, but then does the chroma upsampling and YCbCr to RGB color conversion steps on the GPU at draw time, where it can happen much faster and in parallel. This process frees CPU time..” Microsoft explains.
Microsoft has been touting IE11 as the browser that improves performance of every webpage you browse. Not only is the experience improved, but power consumption is at a minimal allowing for an increase in battery life for mobile devices. The Windows 8.1 update, which comes with Internet Explorer 11, is set for release October 17th for current Windows 8 users.
Further reading: IE11, Internet Explorer, Windows 8.1
