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If Chrome knows that users leave open an insane amount of tabs which kills performance why wouldn’t they have a built in mechanism to suspend the content on the

by vuln 2y ago

If Chrome knows that users leave open an insane amount of tabs which kills performance why wouldn’t they have a built in mechanism to suspend the content on the tabs until it’s necessary? Why does there need to be 3rd party ad on to do the same. Why doesn’t the Chrome team write unbloated code? The binaries just keep getting bigger and bigger. While consumer hardware typically stays about the same with less incremental upgrades.

Voultapher 2y ago
Ehh... Chrome does exactly that without plugins.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
They do have a way to suspend inactive tabs though. The feature is literally called Memory Saver [0]. [0] https://blog.google/products/chrome/new-chrome-features-to-save-battery-and-make-browsing-smoother/ https://blog.google/products/chrome/new-chrome-features-to-s...
nottorp 2y ago
> Why doesn’t the Chrome team write unbloated code? They're busy rewriting internet protocols so they benefit Google more. > If Chrome knows that users leave open an insane amount of tabs which kills performance why wouldn’t they have a built in mechanism to suspend the content on the tabs until it’s necessary? It's built into Chrome now but it's useless. Because it's cheaper to glue together a few memory leaks ^H^H^H javascript frameworks than write something that has constant ram usage for the same working set. What does tab suspending help with when a google sheet with not much on it starts at 3-400 Mb ram usage and ends up at 1.5 - 2 Gb in a few weeks if you don't close the tab?
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
The main issue is that memory reporting tools don't handle paging well. You cannot tell if the ram is actually being used. You can only tell that some app has X amount in the allocation table which is often more likely backed by files on storage than actively used RAM. When you have lots of chrome tabs open the ram isn't being actively used. You may be using a tool that shows total memory allocated. I'd actually recommend looking for a tool that shows page table misses (points where the OS has to load from disk into RAM). Huge numbers of page table misses and actual noticable performance drops are more indicative of any actual problem than a simple allocation which can easily mislead just by having large files mapped.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  They don't handle paging well, they don't handle memory-mapped files well, they don't handle shared libraries well... Memory reporting tools are generally crap for non-experts, and pretty poor even for experts.

by vuln 2y ago

Voultapher 2y ago

Ehh... Chrome does exactly that without plugins.

AlotOfReading 2y ago

They do have a way to suspend inactive tabs though. The feature is literally called Memory Saver [0]. [0] https://blog.google/products/chrome/new-chrome-features-to-save-battery-and-make-browsing-smoother/ https://blog.google/products/chrome/new-chrome-features-to-s...

nottorp 2y ago

> Why doesn’t the Chrome team write unbloated code? They're busy rewriting internet protocols so they benefit Google more. > If Chrome knows that users leave open an insane amount of tabs which kills performance why wouldn’t they have a built in mechanism to suspend the content on the tabs until it’s necessary? It's built into Chrome now but it's useless. Because it's cheaper to glue together a few memory leaks ^H^H^H javascript frameworks than write something that has constant ram usage for the same working set. What does tab suspending help with when a google sheet with not much on it starts at 3-400 Mb ram usage and ends up at 1.5 - 2 Gb in a few weeks if you don't close the tab?

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

The main issue is that memory reporting tools don't handle paging well. You cannot tell if the ram is actually being used. You can only tell that some app has X amount in the allocation table which is often more likely backed by files on storage than actively used RAM. When you have lots of chrome tabs open the ram isn't being actively used. You may be using a tool that shows total memory allocated. I'd actually recommend looking for a tool that shows page table misses (points where the OS has to load from disk into RAM). Huge numbers of page table misses and actual noticable performance drops are more indicative of any actual problem than a simple allocation which can easily mislead just by having large files mapped.

SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
They don't handle paging well, they don't handle memory-mapped files well, they don't handle shared libraries well... Memory reporting tools are generally crap for non-experts, and pretty poor even for experts.