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Google Chrome 55 May Use Less Memory (blogspot.com)
Slashdot reader justthinkit writes: Google Chrome is arguably the best browser and the biggest memory hog. Presently. But the Google engineers are hard at work, optimizing the next version of Chrome. Will this be an important, or just another incremental, upgrade?
They're specifically targeting the browser's JavaScript engine, V8, and they've already "analyzed and significantly reduced the memory footprint of several websites that were identified as representative..." (For example, on the mobile New York Times site they've reduced heap memory consumption by about 66%.) Chrome 55 is scheduled for release in December. Any Chrome fans looking forward to testing its performance?
They're specifically targeting the browser's JavaScript engine, V8, and they've already "analyzed and significantly reduced the memory footprint of several websites that were identified as representative..." (For example, on the mobile New York Times site they've reduced heap memory consumption by about 66%.) Chrome 55 is scheduled for release in December. Any Chrome fans looking forward to testing its performance?
it may not
"We used the tool to identify inefficiencies with a number of internal types." That is about the most technically interesting part of the whole article. Would have been nice to have a bit more of what was changed, how, why, ...
I look forward to a better Chrome experience on Android 6. It can be annoying at times. I prefer Opera Mini and will until Chrome, or another browser proves to be faster and with fewer ads.
Indeed. And while it's "arguably the best browser" one might well argue otherwise.
Does the article actually say anything?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... on linux, then I won't be using it on Linux and would recommend others don't either. Google may think its sandbox code is perfect with no possible exploits but I don't intend to test out the veracity of their naive belief for them on my systems.
Current versions of Google Chrome use 66% or more memory than they should. I guess no one noticed for years. But now the engineers are going to get to work.
So the New York Times are too poor to hire proper developers and have a responsive website?
How is the sandbox running as root?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Needing root access would mean needing to sudo to run chrome, correct? I don't know what you're doing, but my chrome processes run as user processes, not root processes
Ok, they made some tweaks, but I doubt they addressed the REAL memory hog in the javascript world.
Essentially, if you open 10 pages that use the same javascript library (common occurrence), your javascript engine will load it 10 times into memory (and, the kicker, perform probably the same JIT optimizations for each one). This is because the engine has no reliable way of knowing that this library called xxx.js is exactly the same as the other xxx.js, so it has to keep N copies loaded into memory.
Some times browsers will try to be smart and use the URL to determine that the libraries are the same, but they still aren't smart enough to figure out that two files with exactly the same checksum (sha, md5, whatever) are the same. So close, and yet, so far.
Contrast this with your average computer from the 80s, where libraries are loaded into memory once, and shared by all applications that require them (that is, library xxx.dll is loaded into memory, every process will share the pointer to that library... unless certain conditions are met, the library will not be loaded into memory again).
Perhaps Google could nudge the web one more step toward the 80s, and begin pushing for some sort of standard that allows one to verify that, yes, this library is already loaded and yes, this library is indeed xxx.js version 1.7.
And, while we're dreaming, maybe some day libraries can even be signed*, and we could verify that the CDN isn't serving us some modified xxx.js that contains malware (because they were hacked... because they were running PHP).
* SSL is not enough. Sure, you trust your connection to the CDN. Do you trust that they weren't compromised and are now serving modified files?
Remember to collect your payment from Google, and do not pass Go.
/rant }
Can we get some unbiased reporting, please?
Arguably the best browser, my ass.
{ rant }
1) Chrome sucks at tab management. In today's age of wide-screen monitors, tabs belong on the side of the browser, not the top. Although there are add-ins that try to work around Google's arrogance, they all suck.
2) Chrome was created to help put Google.com in front of user's faces. Why else would Google/Chrome refuse to do DNS lookups for one-word entries in the address bar?
3) The add-in choices are nowhere near as robust as those for Firefox. Thankfully, Pale Moon is keeping that option alive, since Mozilla is killing Firefox by becoming "just another shitty browser."
{
Google Chrome 55 May Use Less Memory
But then again Kate Upton may come by my house tonight looking for a good time. I figure the probability of both being about equal.
It's using V8.
You've heard of the setuid permissions bit, right? You'll find that the sandbox is owned by root with 4755 permissions. You figure out the rest.
Waiting to see if Chrome 55 runs better than Opera
Well it's safe to say that it won't run better than Opera 12, that's for damn sure.
They are optimizing the shit into it so to speak?
Wake me when we know whether it does use less memory, until then, where the fuck is the story?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, Chrome sandboxing will effectively jail Hillary's browsing to the point she may even find her lost email. Unfortunately, she is an apple user. #ImWithIt
Arguing over semantics and disregarding the story itself:
Of course it "may" use less memory. It may also use more memory. What a bold statement that was! And Chrome is "arguably" the best browser? Sure. Edge is also "arguably" the best. And Firefox is "arguably" the best. It doesn't matter which browser you pick because each one is "arguably" better than another. Slashdot editors suck.
Someone trying to sound intelligent but who didn't RTFA(s):
V8 has been around for years, what more can Google do to improve performance at this point? How would they profile the V8 engine to discover optimizations? They need to make sure they're testing workloads for news, social, and media websites - I know I've had problems of my own. When they make changes, are they looking at the internal VM states? Heap memory consumption? Chrome's memory usage goes crazy sometimes, especially on my parent's computer (low memory) and my phone, so maybe they could implement some kind of specialized memory reduction. It's not like the summary really explains anything... Slashdot editors suck.
Guy who thinks this is the best place and time to showcase their conspiracy theory:
Seems Google realized that their Javascript engine sputtering over processing ads on sites was causing more and more people to adopt ad blockers. I wouldn't be surprised if it "accidentally" stops extensions like NoScript from working. THAT'S the kind of story this site should be covering! Google probably paid Slashd -- I mean, Dice -- to show this. Slashdot editors suck.
Linux/FOSS hipster fanboy who wants to hijack the story to brag about his gigantic open-source penis:
I stopped using Chr*me ages ago and switched to Midori. You probably haven't heard of it because you're still using W*ndows or M*cs like a chump, but it has such a great following in the Linux community. So many features baked right in that you don't get in other browsers like F*refox or Op*ra. 'course it runs better on my custom-built Xfce desktop for PapyrOS, but I know that not everybody has the time or skills to do that. Speaking of, what happened with my submission to Slashdot about a blog post I wrote detailing how I managed to all that? Slashdot editors suck.
(no offense to people who actually use Midori, like Xfce, or have heard of PapyrOS)
Anti-Microsoft fanboy who is probably still running Windows on their own computer because they haven't found a "suitable" Linux distro yet:
What do you expect from a browser on Windows? You'll get better performance if you switch to Linux. I was trying Chromium the other day while testing out Puppy Linux and it runs SO much better than anything I've seen on Windoze. Really, the only way to improve Chrome is to install it on a non-M$ operating system. Speaking of, this site doesn't work well on Puppy Linux. Slashdot editors suck.
Wanna-be economist:
Is it really wise for GOOG to be refocusing their workforce on such minor gains? I get why MSFT invested more into Edge, given that IE had such a bad rap, but even AAPL realized that spending manpower on Safari would happen at a net loss. How about some analysis about that, David? Slashdot editors suck.
Guy who thinks that every programming language except his own are bad (with heavy emphasis on Javascript and PHP):
Can't we just admit that Javascript is a horrible language? Doesn't have strict typing, classes are implemented as a perversion of functions, "this" in a callback never refers to what you think it does... Google is such a web pioneer, right? They should contribute towards a new language that's actually built by people who know what they're doing. Shame on Slashdot for continuing to showcase stories like this one that only help to solidify Javascript as the de-facto language of the internet. Slashdot editors suck.
I feel like I'm probably missing a trope in here...
(PS: Slashdot editors suck, Ron Paul 2012, the "n" word)
For Android, I prefer Firefox with uBlock Origin's extension...
Spreadsheets require a crazy amount of browser memory. I have a google sheets spreadsheet that required 1.2GB RAM in Chrome 52. It requires over 2GB RAM in Chrome 53. Hopefully Google can improve this soon!
I suggest you go learn about the Set UID bit (SUID). Then come back and act like you know something when you actually do....
Are they going to bother to fix the bloated Win XP version?
chrome's executable is not SUID. Viol8 did not mention SUID, just that they believed chrome to require root in their original post
yeap! Anyone knows why Gello, the default browser for cyanogemod, cant block ADs?
What a polite post!
Is it just me to wonder why browser need gigabytes of memory just to display a webpage? They receive text, format it according to CSS rules, display relatively small sized images, and, yes, execute Javascript. Still, a HUGE webpage is still a tiny amount of data.
Considering that entire operating systems used to run comfortably on systems with 32MB of RAM in yesteryear, and could display all this media, it just astounds me that systems now require 4-8GB to provide a comfortable browsing experience.
Even if Chromes memory footprint has shrunk a little, i'm certain it still uses an obscene amount of RAM relative to what it actually does most the time.
Looks like the big G is feeling the pressure from a certain five percenter! and is trying to talk up 'improvements'....
Looks like a little competition in the market place seems to be working... Come on Edge!
(Okay.. A very, very, very _little_ competition.... )
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Well clearly Google says Chrome 55 is more about addressing mobile Chrome issues which are bad. But desktop version will see some benefit. Glad that Google is not ignoring the problems like Microsoft did with IE for so long. I was seriously backing off Chrome a bit and using Firefox. It was impossible to use Chrome on a slower mobile device. You get a few tabs open and you were done.