Accelerating Firefox AI with C++: A Game-Changer for Performance
Last year, we unveiled the Firefox AI Runtime, enhancing features like PDF.js generated alt text. However, we knew we could do better.
What’s New?
- Speed Improvements: We’ve replaced the onnxruntime-web with a native C++ version, drastically enhancing inference speed.
- Transformers.js Integration: Direct communication between Transformers.js and ONNX Runtime simplifies integrating changes without affecting existing features.
- Benchmark Results: We observed inference speedups of 2 to 10×, with significant reductions in latency—as low as 350ms for some processes.
Future Plans:
- Gradual rollout of the new backend across all Transformers.js capabilities.
- Multi-threading improvements for operations like DequantizeLinear and matrix transposition.
- Upcoming GPU support for even better performance.
The advancements promise not just enhanced UX, but also wider accessibility to ML features!
💬 Join the conversation: Share your thoughts or questions on our journey on Discord in the firefox-ai channel or file an issue on Bugzilla. Let’s shape the future together!
