In SPv1 there is an optimization to fold BeginCompositing/Drawing/EndCompositing into a single drawing display item. This was because Skia could perform peephole optimization to skip layer creation if the layer contains only simple opacity/blending, and the drawing is simple primitive.
In SPv2 this optimization is disabled because layerization happens after, and the opacity/blending may need to be layerized for correct grouping. However we still want the performance benefit if we decided not to layerize the effect. This will be done as a part of chrishtr's effort to implement non-composited effects in PaintArtifactCompositor.
BTW, Skia can fail to detect self-overlapping path for complex text (and thus apply the peephole optimization when it shouldn't). See fast/text/complex-text-opacity.html for an example.
Comment 1 by bugdroid1@chromium.org
, Dec 20 2016