Is there any solution to Firefox 37's poor Canvas rendering performance - performance

Question

I've deliberately provided the version number in the question as this is the kind of question that will go out of date at some point.
Here is a simple animation that will run perfectly smoothly in Chrome and Safari, but will be very jerky in Firefox:
function lerp(a,b,λ) {
return a + λ*(b-a);
}
function random(a,b) {
return lerp( a, b, Math.random() );
}
// = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
$(document).ready( function()
{
var canvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");
var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
var balls = new Array(12);
for( var i=0; i<balls.length; i++ )
{
while(true)
{
var density = Math.sqrt( random(1,100) );
var r = random(5, 30);
var x = random( r+1, canvas.width-1 -(r+1) ),
y = random( r+1, canvas.height-1 -(r+1) );
var overlap = false;
for( var j=0; j<i; j++ )
{
var _x = balls[j].x - x,
_y = balls[j].y - y,
d2 = _x*_x + _y*_y,
_r = balls[j].r + r;
if( d2 < _r*_r )
overlap = true;
}
if( overlap )
continue;
balls[i] = {
color : d3.hsl( lerp(0,240,density/10), random(.3,.7), random(.3,.7) ).toString(),
x : x,
y : y,
vx : random(0, 0.2),
vy : random(0, 0.2),
r : r,
advance: function(t) {
this.x += t * this.vx;
this.y += t * this.vy;
}
};
break;
}
};
window.requestAnimationFrame(vsync);
var t_last;
function vsync(t)
{
if( t_last )
render( t - t_last );
t_last = t;
window.requestAnimationFrame(vsync);
}
function render(t_frame)
{
canvas.width = window.innerWidth;
canvas.height = window.innerHeight;
ctx.fillStyle="gray";
ctx.fillRect(0,0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
function advance_all(t) {
balls.forEach( function(b) {
b.advance(t);
});
}
var t_remaining = t_frame;
while(true) {
var hit = get_next_collision( balls, canvas.width, canvas.height );
if( t_remaining < hit.t )
break;
advance_all( hit.t );
t_remaining -= hit.t;
collide_wall( balls[hit.i], hit.wall );
balls[hit.i].advance(.001);
};
advance_all( t_remaining );
// draw balls
balls.forEach( function(ball) {
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.arc(ball.x, ball.y, ball.r, 0, Math.PI*2, true);
ctx.closePath();
ctx.fillStyle = ball.color;
ctx.fill();
});
}
});
// = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
function get_next_collision(balls,W,H)
{
var winner;
// ball-wall
balls.forEach( function(ball,i)
{
var t = [];
t['L'] = (ball.r - ball.x) / ball.vx; // s.x + t v.x = r
t['T'] = (ball.r - ball.y) / ball.vy;
t['R'] = (W-1-ball.r - ball.x) / ball.vx; // s.x + t v.x = (W-1)-r
t['B'] = (H-1-ball.r - ball.y) / ball.vy;
// get index of smallest positive t
var LR = t['L'] >= 0 ? 'L' : 'R',
TB = t['T'] >= 0 ? 'T' : 'B',
wall = t[LR] < t[TB] ? LR : TB;
if( ! winner || ( t[wall] <= winner.t ) )
winner = {
t : t[wall],
i : i,
wall: wall
};
});
return winner;
}
function collide_wall( A, wall )
{
if( wall == 'L' || wall == 'R' )
A.vx *= -1;
else
A.vy *= -1;
}
html, body {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
margin: 0px;
}
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjs/1.5.1/math.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://d3js.org/d3.v3.min.js"></script>
<canvas id="myCanvas">
<!-- Insert fallback content here -->
</canvas>
Why is Firefox performing significantly worse than its competitors?
If I take the number of balls to 500 Chrome is still smooth, Firefox is seriously choppy.
If I take the number of balls down to 1 Firefox is still burring it.
Another experiment I did was applying a fixed velocity increment each frame, so that the smoothness of the animation accurately reflects the evenness of the render callback. This showed Firefox to be all over the place. Chrome on the other hand was smooth.
If there is sufficient interest, I can provide a snippet for that also and maybe tidy up the first one so that it offers a slider to modify the ball count.
As far as I can see, (1) Firefox definitely isn't giving us a genuine VSYNC callback, I suspect it is just using a timer, (2) even correcting for that by manually calculating elapsed time for each frame, it burrs the animation, maybe suggesting that it sometimes the callback fires in time to catch the VSYNC and sometimes it misses the boat, (3) there is an additional compositing hit that is disproportionate compared with Chrome.
Is there anything to be done about this?
EDIT: I found this question from four years ago! Poor performance of html5 canvas under firefox -- please don't mark this question as the duplicate unless it is certain that the answer to that question is still the only relevant answer four years later. I've deliberately included the version number in the question, as the question pertains specifically to the current version.