Microsoft reveals Internet Explorer Performance Lab, measures IE performance

Ron

In a new blog post, Microsoft has revealed the Internet Explorer Performance Lab, which is used to measure browser performance against real world scenarios. And since real world browser performance matters, the data is used in developing Internet Explorer.

“Web performance matters to everyone, and one engineering objective for Internet Explorer is to be the world’s fastest browser. To achieve this goal we need to reliably measure browser performance against the real world scenarios that matter to our customers,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.

The company will collect reliable, accurate, and actionable data to inform decisions throughout the IE development cycle. Microsoft will measure the performance of IE almost 200 tiles a day, and collect over 5.7 million measurements and 480GB of runtime data daily.

The IE Performance Lab contains over 120 high-end and low-end computers used to measure IE’s performance and simulates a “mini version of the Internet” to capture everything from high-level CPU and GPU activity, to low-level information such as cache efficiency, networking statistics, memory usage patterns, and more.

Microsoft believes that real world browser performance matters and measuring performance at this large scale is a significant investment and a full time job, however, the results are worth the effort. “The data gathered by the Internet Explorer Performance Lab is instrumental in our understanding of browser performance and of the underlying PC hardware, and in developing a fast, fluid, and responsive web experience for users,” Microsoft adds.

You can read the full blog post here.