Kindle Fire features Amazon's 'cloud-accelerated' Silk Web browser

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014
As part of the Kindle Fire unveiling on Wednesday, Amazon announced its new browser architecture, dubbed Silk, which does some processing and rendering in the cloud to speed up Web browsing.



Featuring what Amazon calls a "split browser" architecture, the "cloud-accelerated" Silk uses Amazon Web services to offer a faster Web browsing experience. The Silk software resides on both the new Kindle Fire, as well as Amazon's servers.



Silk utilizes Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, or "EC2," which sports latency of 5 milliseconds or less to most websites, rather than the 100 milliseconds seen through most wireless connections. Silk is said to dynamically divide labor between the local Kindle Fire and the cloud-based EC2, taking into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content.



"We refactored and rebuilt the browser software stack and now push pieces of the computation into the AWS cloud," Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said. "When you use Silk -- without thinking about it or doing anything explicit -- you're calling on the raw computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate your web browsing."



Amazon noted that constructing cnn.com requires 161 files served from 25 unique domains, representing the complexity of modern websites. An average website is said to require 80 files served from 13 different domains.



Combined with high latency over wireless connections, this can lead to long load times for websites. Amazon says its new Silk browser solves this by sharing the load between the Kindle Fire and its servers.







The retailer noted that many top websites are hosted on Amazon's own EC2 servers, meaning that many website requests will never leave the extended infrastructure of Amazon Web Services.



"If hundreds of files are required to build a web page across dozens of domains, Silk can request all of this content simultaneously with EC2, without overwhelming the mobile device processor or impacting battery life," the company said.







Amazon Silk keeps a persistent connection open to EC2, which in turn also maintains a connection to the top sites on the Web. Similar to Amazon's recommended products on its website, Silk "learns more about the individual sites it renders and where users go next."



"By observing the aggregate traffic patterns on various web sites, it refines its heuristics, allowing for accurate predictions of the next page request," Amazon said. "For example, Silk might observe that 85 percent of visitors to a leading news site click on that site's top headline.







"With that knowledge, EC2 and Silk together make intelligent decisions about pre-pushing content to the Kindle Fire. As a result, the next page a Kindle Fire customer is likely to visit will already be available locally in the device cache, enabling instant rendering to the screen."



The Amazon Silk browser is a feature exclusive to the new Kindle Fire announced on Wednesday. The color touchscreen tablet aims to compete with Apple's iPad with an aggressive $199 price, and will begin shipping on Nov. 15.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 72
    So Silk uses the Amazon cloud as a proxy that downsamples and caches content. This could open things up for Amazon to modify web sites as in inject their own ads into other sites based on content and other Goggle ad type of processes for their own benefit. Not to sat they will, but they could to support their free cloud and reduced hardware price.
  • Reply 2 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    As part of the Kindle Fire unveiling on Wednesday, Amazon announced its new browser architecture, dubbed Silk, which does some processing and rendering in the cloud to speed up Web browsing.



    Featuring what Amazon calls a "split browser" architecture, the "cloud-accelerated" Silk uses Amazon Web services to offer a faster Web browsing experience. The Silk software resides on both the new Kindle Fire, as well as Amazon's servers.



    Silk utilizes Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, or "EC2," which sports latency of 5 milliseconds or less to most websites, rather than the 100 milliseconds seen through most wireless connections. Silk is said to dynamically divide labor between the local Kindle Fire and the cloud-based EC2, taking into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity and the location of any cached content.



    "We refactored and rebuilt the browser software stack and now push pieces of the computation into the AWS cloud," Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said. "When you use Silk -- without thinking about it or doing anything explicit -- you're calling on the raw computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate your web browsing."



    Amazon noted that constructing cnn.com requires 161 files served from 25 unique domains, representing the complexity of modern websites. An average website is said to require 80 files served from 13 different domains.



    Combined with high latency over wireless connections, this can lead to long load times for websites. Amazon says its new Silk browser solves this by sharing the load between the Kindle Fire and its servers.







    The retailer noted that many top websites are hosted on Amazon's own EC2 servers, meaning that many website requests will never leave the extended infrastructure of Amazon Web Services.



    "If hundreds of files are required to build a web page across dozens of domains, Silk can request all of this content simultaneously with EC2, without overwhelming the mobile device processor or impacting battery life," the company said.







    Amazon Silk keeps a persistent connection open to EC2, which in turn also maintains a connection to the top sites on the Web. Similar to Amazon's recommended products on its website, Silk "learns more about the individual sites it renders and where users go next."



    "By observing the aggregate traffic patterns on various web sites, it refines its heuristics, allowing for accurate predictions of the next page request," Amazon said. "For example, Silk might observe that 85 percent of visitors to a leading news site click on that site's top headline.







    "With that knowledge, EC2 and Silk together make intelligent decisions about pre-pushing content to the Kindle Fire. As a result, the next page a Kindle Fire customer is likely to visit will already be available locally in the device cache, enabling instant rendering to the screen."



    The Amazon Silk browser is a feature exclusive to the new Kindle Fire announced on Wednesday. The color touchscreen tablet aims to compete with Apple's iPad with an aggressive $199 price, and will begin shipping on Nov. 15.





    Bring on the lawsuits from Samsung et al
  • Reply 3 of 72
    Silk's logging of user browser patterns could set up Amazon as a potential competitor to Google. Or, the HW and OS isn't strong enough to support a native browser.
  • Reply 4 of 72
    Nothing new here, people. "Split browsing" has existed since the days of WAP browsers...remember those? Back in the 1990s.
  • Reply 5 of 72
    malaxmalax Posts: 1,598member
    I'm not certain this will be a success (I can imagine lots of issues with funnelling millions of Web requests through Amazon's infrastructure and site compatibility issues, for example), but I have to give them credit for trying something like this. You can tell they are trying to take many pages from Apple's playbook on this: with the exception of the font, that video is very much like the new product video Apple posts to their site; they are focusing on the "it just works" aspect; they are introducing a "proprietary" solutution--SILK is only on Fire for now; etc. All in all, they are demonstrating a willingness and ability to be innovative. Now they have to execute.
  • Reply 6 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Nothing new here, people. "Split browsing" has existed since the days of WAP browsers...remember those? Back in the 1990s.



    and there are still plenty of mobile providers that offload some amount of transcoding and cacheing (using combinations of proprietary code and open-source stuff such as squid), the WAP-gap still exists (albeit via a different name), and this, like those "solutions", should fail miserably. i wonder what the reality of the performance-hit will be.



    and no thanks ... i don't want any service provider diddling in the middle of my browsing.
  • Reply 7 of 72
    So, if I download Opera mini or Skyfire I'll get the same experience as SILK?
  • Reply 8 of 72
    If they're only making 19$ profit on the device, I'm assuming their 79$-annual service fee is going to be mandatory to offset the cloud load.



    I'm sure gizmodo's load times will still suck on that device.
  • Reply 9 of 72
    I mentioned this in the other thread, but I'm not so sure that this 'cloud accelerated' browsing is necessarily a good thing.



    I don't know about other people, but I wouldn't want my every move on the internet being tracked.
  • Reply 10 of 72
    Great. Amazon gets to track everything you do on the net. No thanks.
  • Reply 11 of 72
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    I mentioned this in the other thread, but I'm not so sure that this 'cloud accelerated' browsing is necessarily a good thing.



    I don't know about other people, but I wouldn't want my every move on the internet being tracked.



    In a way there might be less tracking since the server logs for all of those unique domains where the pieces and parts are coming from will show Amazon's IP address not yours.



    The concept sounds interesting though, but on the other hand so much of the internet uses cookies, and now HTML5 stored client data, I would expect the benefits of splitting up the rendering to be somewhat offset by the need for the mobile device to do a lot of the heavy lifting anyway.
  • Reply 12 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    I don't know about other people, but I wouldn't want my every move on the internet being tracked.



    Your every move on AI is tracked by over a dozen advertising companies. That doesn't seem to stop even a guy like you.



    WRT to "other people", they care even less than you about being tracked, and you seem to care very little when it comes right down to it.
  • Reply 13 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ConradJoe View Post


    Your every move on AI is tracked by over a dozen advertising companies. That doesn't seem to stop even a guy like you.



    WRT to "other people", they care even less than you about being tracked, and you seem to care very little when it comes right down to it.



    Not true. I block everything.



    I seem to care very little about being tracked? Um, I care a lot about being tracked, that's why I block everything. Who are you to tell me what I care about?
  • Reply 14 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    I don't know about other people, but I wouldn't want my every move on the internet being tracked.



    I like you Apple ][ you're sarcastic just like me!
  • Reply 15 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bullhead View Post


    Great. Amazon gets to track everything you do on the net. No thanks.



    Well, apple tracked everywhere I've been driving to and walking so... this can't be any worse.
  • Reply 16 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nickmccally View Post


    Well, apple tracked everywhere I've been driving to and walking so... this can't be any worse.



    \



    (filler)
  • Reply 17 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    I mentioned this in the other thread, but I'm not so sure that this 'cloud accelerated' browsing is necessarily a good thing.



    I don't know about other people, but I wouldn't want my every move on the internet being tracked.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    Not true. I block everything.



    I seem to care very little about being tracked? Um, I care a lot about being tracked, that's why I block everything. Who are you to tell me what I care about?



    block what exactly?



    the only way to be completely anonymous is to use a proxy server via a VPN connection .
  • Reply 18 of 72
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Apple ][ View Post


    Not true. I block everything.



    Can't be done on an iPhone or iPad, at least to my knowledge. That is closer to the comparison we are discussing since the article is about the Amazon Fire and Silk browser.
  • Reply 19 of 72
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    This will be successful - if there are no hidden fees. While it's obviously a vastly inferior product to the iPad, it will enable minimal tablet functionality (browsing the web and therefore email) at a price that's 60% below Apple's.



    Now, I wouldn't buy one because of the size and limited capability, but a lot of people will. If someone was previously willing to pay $179 for a Kindle (or $129 for an ad-supported Kindle), paying $20-70 more for web browsing capability might be attractive.



    It's not a surprise that Amazon cut the price on Kindles at the same time. Without that price cut, the Fire would have mostly stolen business from Kindle.
  • Reply 20 of 72
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by s4mb4 View Post


    block what exactly?



    the only way to be completely anonymous is to use a proxy server via a VPN connection .



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