Chromium Blink's Layer Recycle Tree Optimization
Blink2863 Loka 2025

Chromium Blink's Layer Recycle Tree Optimization

The sources provide an extensive technical explanation of the Chromium/Blink rendering pipeline, focusing specifically on the compositor's layer trees and a performance optimization known as the Recycle Tree. Modern web rendering is detailed as a multi-phase process involving the DOM Tree, style, layout, and ultimately, compositing, which operates on a separate thread using Active, Pending, and Recycle Tree structures. The primary function of the Recycle Tree is to act as a cache of old layer objects (LayerImpls) from the previous frame, allowing the compositor to reuse them during the next commit instead of allocating new objects, which drastically reduces memory churn and speeds up dynamic updates like animations. This mechanism ensures that the compositor can efficiently mirror changes originating from the main thread's style invalidation and layout calculations, thereby maintaining high frame rates and preventing jank during continuous web interaction.

Jaksot(396)

blink::GraphicsContext

blink::GraphicsContext

immediate drawing API that records to a display list. Painters for layout objects use GraphicsContext to “draw”—but in modern Blink those calls get recorded into a display list (PaintRecord) backed by...

10 Loka 202544min

blink::TransformPaintPropertyNode / ClipPaintPropertyNode / EffectPaintPropertyNode / ScrollPaintPropertyNode

blink::TransformPaintPropertyNode / ClipPaintPropertyNode / EffectPaintPropertyNode / ScrollPaintPropertyNode

These are the nodes within those four trees. Every piece of painted content (a “paint chunk”) is associated with a tuple of (Transform, Clip, Effect, Scroll) nodes—its PropertyTreeState. This precisel...

10 Loka 202533min

blink::PaintPropertyTreeBuilder

blink::PaintPropertyTreeBuilder

builds/updates paint property trees.Consumes the layout/fragment data and produces the four paint property trees (Transform, Clip, Effect, Scroll) for the current frame. These trees encode coordinate ...

10 Loka 202547min

blink::PrePaintTreeWalk

blink::PrePaintTreeWalk

cross‑frame pre‑paint traversal. Runs in the InPrePaint lifecycle phase. Walks the entire layout tree starting at the root LocalFrameView, updating paint invalidation state and computing the context n...

10 Loka 202531min

blink::NGPhysicalFragment and friends

blink::NGPhysicalFragment and friends

Layout takes the styled DOM and produces a fragment tree of positioned boxes. In modern Blink this is LayoutNG; the core artifact is NGPhysicalFragment, which stores geometry and is used downstream fo...

10 Loka 202537min

blink::StyleEngine

blink::StyleEngine

style invalidation & resolution (recalc). 
Given DOM/style changes since the last frame, StyleEngine computes updated ComputedStyles, manages active stylesheets/media query state, and marks the right ...

10 Loka 202534min

blink::Document & blink::DocumentLifecycle

blink::Document & blink::DocumentLifecycle

states that gate phases. The document owns the DOM and keeps a DocumentLifecycle state machine that ensures we do things in phase order (style before layout, pre‑paint before paint, etc.). Lifecycle t...

10 Loka 202535min

blink::LocalFrameView

blink::LocalFrameView

orchestrates style → layout → pre‑paint/paint for a frame. This is the workhorse that actually runs lifecycle phases. On a frame tick from WebFrameWidgetImpl, it goes through style recalc, layout (Lay...

9 Loka 202544min