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docs: republish the macOS benchmarks with ghostty's release and resource use #382

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natsukium merged 1 commit from docs/macos-bench-rerun into main 2026-09-24 23:04:04 +09:00
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natsukium commented 2026-09-24 21:20:53 +09:00
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The published macOS benchmarks measured only ghostty's tip, whose throughput is not what the 1.3.1 release ships, and predated the harness that records CPU time and peak memory per workload (#379). This republishes the macOS section from a fresh three-round run at 9d1d842f (v0.1.0-rc.6 plus the daemon's flood fixes, #375 and #380).

  • ghostty 1.3.1 and tip side by side. The release trails the tip by 2.2–7.5x on cat, kitten __benchmark__ and DOOM-fire and on most vtebench/termbench-pro rows; on vtebench's scrolling row the release is the faster one.
  • Startup for every terminal, ghostty-tip included (the old exit-timed suite could not measure it).
  • Resource use under load: CPU time and peak footprint per throughput workload, mirroring the Linux section.
  • README's headline table follows the new medians.

Kept honest on the page:

  • felis and alacritty share the lowest mean latency (22.2 ms) with overlapping ranges, so no winner is claimed.
  • felis (cold) reaches its first window before felis (warm) in every round (122–135 vs 144–149 ms); the run does not show why.
  • Every peak footprint while drawing is far above the idle figure (felis's client alone holds 430–460 MB under load against 33 MB idle; alacritty, kitty and wezterm jump 4–16x too; both ghostty builds stay within 1.6x).
  • felis leads CPU time on cat, termbench and kittenbench, but spends ~1.7x alacritty's on vtebench and DOOM-fire, almost all in the daemon.

Not included: the Linux section still lacks a ghostty release column; that needs a run on the Linux host.

Verified: every leg completed in all three rounds (felis's round-1 latency leg passed on the harness's automatic retry); just prose-check clean; treefmt applied.

The published macOS benchmarks measured only ghostty's tip, whose throughput is not what the 1.3.1 release ships, and predated the harness that records CPU time and peak memory per workload (#379). This republishes the macOS section from a fresh three-round run at `9d1d842f` (v0.1.0-rc.6 plus the daemon's flood fixes, #375 and #380). - **ghostty 1.3.1 and tip side by side.** The release trails the tip by 2.2–7.5x on `cat`, `kitten __benchmark__` and DOOM-fire and on most vtebench/termbench-pro rows; on vtebench's scrolling row the release is the faster one. - **Startup for every terminal**, ghostty-tip included (the old exit-timed suite could not measure it). - **Resource use under load**: CPU time and peak footprint per throughput workload, mirroring the Linux section. - **README's headline table** follows the new medians. Kept honest on the page: - felis and alacritty share the lowest mean latency (22.2 ms) with overlapping ranges, so no winner is claimed. - felis (cold) reaches its first window before felis (warm) in every round (122–135 vs 144–149 ms); the run does not show why. - Every peak footprint while drawing is far above the idle figure (felis's client alone holds 430–460 MB under load against 33 MB idle; alacritty, kitty and wezterm jump 4–16x too; both ghostty builds stay within 1.6x). - felis leads CPU time on `cat`, termbench and kittenbench, but spends ~1.7x alacritty's on vtebench and DOOM-fire, almost all in the daemon. Not included: the Linux section still lacks a ghostty release column; that needs a run on the Linux host. Verified: every leg completed in all three rounds (felis's round-1 latency leg passed on the harness's automatic retry); `just prose-check` clean; treefmt applied.
docs: republish the macOS benchmarks with ghostty's release and resource use
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7a1b054143
 
The published macOS results measured only ghostty's tip, whose throughput
is not what the 1.3.1 release ships, and predated the harness that records
CPU time and peak memory per workload. A new three-round run on the same
machine, with felis carrying the daemon's flood fixes, now reports both
ghostty builds, time to first window for every terminal (ghostty-tip
included, which the old exit-timed startup suite could not measure), and
the resource tables the Linux section already has.

Three findings keep the page honest. felis and alacritty share the lowest
mean latency and their ranges overlap, so no winner is claimed. felis
(cold) reaches its first window before felis (warm) in every round, which
this run does not explain. And every terminal's peak footprint while
drawing is far above its idle figure (felis's client alone holds 430 to
460 MB under load), so the idle table is not a working-set figure.

Assisted-by: Claude Code:Opus 5.5
natsukium deleted branch docs/macos-bench-rerun 2026-09-24 23:04:04 +09:00
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