Mozilla MemShrink Set To Fix Firefox Memory

darthcamaro writes "If you're like a lot of Firefox 4 users out there, you've probably noticed that Firefox has a serious memory problem — it uses more than it really should. At long last, Mozilla developers are finally set to take this issue seriously with a dedicated team called MemShrink that are focused on the problem. 'It's pretty clear by now that this is a much bigger problem than any one person can likely tackle,' Mozilla Developer Johnny Stenback said."

Comments

You can fix the version number inflation too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a Chrome Clone, make the next release Firefox 4.1.

Re:All browsers are consuming more memory.

[MrEricSir]

A lot of it's got to be the increasing size of web pages in general. Now that most folks have higher bandwidth connections, web designers don't focus on keeping the download size small.

Multiply that increase by the size of your cache (how many times can you click "back" without hitting the disk?) and you can see the full scope of the problem.

Yay

[OverlordQ]

At long last, Mozilla developers are finally set to take this issue seriously

Yay, it only took 5 years of bitching for them to actually look into it instead of blaming addons or your profile.

Problem of perception?

[parlancex]

I think at least part of the problem is perception. Most people seem to have this mindset that using RAM is bad, and the more memory you have free and unused the faster your computer will be. These are the same people who think they're increasing their computer's performance by turning off superfetch, etc.The problem with this perception is that it's completely stupid.

Programs load data into memory because memory is fast and your disk and the network are significantly slower; hundreds or thousands of times slower, and pointlessly unloading the data from memory increases the risk of having to go back to the slower disk or network to retrieve it later. If you still have RAM available, it is actually detrimental to your system performance to free this data.

Now, when you're running out of RAM there is a problem, the operating system and applications should begin to free data that is the least likely to be useful in the near future to make room for whatever is needed at the moment. If Firefox has a problem it isn't RAM usage, it's that it isn't paying attention to global system memory levels and caching less aggressively when there is RAM pressure, and honestly I wouldn't know if that IS a problem because I have way more RAM than I've ever seen my computer manage to use.

Re:Problem of perception?

[mrnobo1024]

Most people seem to have this mindset that using RAM is bad, and the more memory you have free and unused the faster your computer will be. These are the same people who think they're increasing their computer's performance by turning off superfetch, etc.The problem with this perception is that it's completely stupid.

Programs load data into memory because memory is fast and your disk and the network are significantly slower; hundreds or thousands of times slower, and pointlessly unloading the data from memory increases the risk of having to go back to the slower disk or network to retrieve it later. If you still have RAM available, it is actually detrimental to your system performance to free this data.

If it were possible for programs to allocate caches that work like the filesystem cache, where old items get discarded automatically to make room for anything more important, then this would make sense. But in real life, when a program written with that "unused memory is wasted memory" philosophy has filled up RAM and you start another program, the first program will have to go to the swapfile. Return to it later and it'll take forever to become usable again, while it gets re-loaded 4kB at a time. (I'll usually just kill the firefox.exe process and restart it when this happens, because that's actually faster)

Re:Problem of perception?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using ram is 'good' and 'superfetch' are good too huh?

How did that info get into memory. Oh thats right by me waiting for it to load from either the internet or from disk.

Back when I used vista turning superfetch off was the #1 way to make the computer usable. Superfetch was too aggressive in loading things. Turn computer on wait 15 mins (no kidding) before I could use the start button. It was even so aggressive it would keep memory full at all times. Meaning as programs freed and used memory the disk was thrashing ALL the time. It was noticeably faster and measurable too (I measured it many times thinking guys like you must be right). Win 7 is a whole different story (it actually works).

As for using too much memory. Using less does mean better performance. *IF* done right. But how much of that information in this case is just 'leaks'? A leak is never going to be used. Meaning windows needs to keep track of it and page it out a some point (meaning less performance at some point).

To bury your head in the sand and say using memory is bad is stupid. But so is using it all up is good. But think about this I have open 1 tab right now to type this in. It is using 250 meg (and that is just what is paged in meaning something in the program touched it). WTF is it doing... That is a seriously crazy amount of memory to be using to have this page open which about 30k. That is some serious overhead there. From this old 80s/90s programmer I look at that and think wtf dudes. You KNOW you can do better than that.

Re:Problem of perception?

[arth1]

it's not designed to be open for a week straight.

Then it needs to be redesigned.
I do not need a server to become sluggish because a user left on vacation with Firefox still running with a detached display.
And I do not want to have to close my munin/bigbrother/mrtg windows running on the wall monitor. It should keep running.

Remember how we ridiculed Microsoft for Windows 95 not being able to run more than a few days without a reboot? Well, it's time we laugh at the idiotic Firefox devs who repeat the same mistakes and invalid assumptions.

Because of the severe bloat and WTF assumptions made by the newer generation of Firefox devs, I've started using other browsers more and more. Like Midori ("it's not easy being green").

Needs to be all of Mozilla

[binarybum]

I hope this isn't just targeted towards firefox. Thunderbird is an unwieldy beast of an email app as well. No good reason that checking my email should involve consuming 200Mb of memory.