5 ms·

The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. It seems like a big improvement for such a simple change (granted that it took one developer two months to do). Act

The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. It seems like a big improvement for such a simple change (granted that it took one developer two months to do). Activity Monitor reports that Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac. That makes for sluggish performance, even with 32 GB of RAM. Looking forward to trying Firefox 33.

frewsxcv 12y ago
I have 10 tabs open and Firefox is using 412 MB of memory. 21 GB is insane
- SloopJon 12y ago
  Yes, it is insane. I've actually never seen it that high before. I get annoyed when it's over one or two GB. There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it. Activity Monitor has me at 756 MB right now, but it will creep back up over the next few days.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    > There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it Nicholas Nethercote's blog[0] has many entries on memory, memory profiling &al as he's one of the big "memshrink" guys. about:memory might be a good start, after reading his memshrink entries[1] and maybe contacting him. Although the very first order of business is to check your extensions, extension leaks is the most common source of trouble (and has been for a long time). Disable everything, see what happens, then re-enable extensions one by one. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
  - jason_dstillery 12y ago
    You can type 'about:memory' into the address bar and it will show you where all your memory is going.
Yoric 12y ago
Fwiw, with Firefox 36, I have a few hundred tabs (not all of them restored) for 716Mb.
ehsanu1 12y ago
Your insane memory usage is probably due to some plugin or other. Adblock is known to consume something like 40mb per tab open for example, due to injecting a large stylesheet into every single page ever opened.
- tome 12y ago
  Wow. Is there any way to mitigate that?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - masklinn 12y ago
    https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus... http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_pluss_effect_on_firefoxs_memory_usage/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_... The only true fix is to remove it, although changing the ruleset and finding out which tab has humongous numbers of iframes is probably a good start: according to link 1 ABP has a static memory consumption of ~60MiB, plus 3~6MiB/iframe (since it's caused by the stylesheet size, I expect the precise ruleset impacts that)
  - niutech 12y ago
    Don't use AdBlock, use the HOSTS file: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    Push for a Firefox port of HTTPSwitchboard.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  > Adblock is known to consume something like 40mb per tab open for example Nope. It's more like 4 MiB per iframe. ABP is a well-written extension, and I am 99.9% certain that it is not the cause of a Firefox instance taking up 21 GB of memory. Please don't spread misinformation.
mccr8 12y ago
If you go to about:memory, you can get a better breakdown of how memory is being used. If you see something that looks out of the ordinary, please file a bug in Bugzilla and add [MemShrink] to the whiteboard!
- nnethercote 12y ago
  Yes, this. While extensions are often the cause of high memory usage, it's not always the case, and immediately blaming extensions makes people accuse Mozilla of passing the buck. If you ever see someone complaining about Firefox's memory usage, looking at about:memory is always the first step you should tell them to take. The amount of information can be overwhelming but in extreme cases like this it's often fairly obvious what the problem is -- look for the biggest measurement! And if it's still not obvious after that, communicating with Firefox developers (e.g. by filing a bug) usually results in progress happening.
lucb1e 12y ago
> Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac Wow, that is just insane. Checking right now, it uses ~950MB for me on GNU/Linux. That's with 14 tabs (among which 2 that use flash player) and 20 active add-ons (gestures, self-destructing cookies, header modifier, adblock plus, etc.).
nnethercote 12y ago
The Latin1 optimization is excellent. Conceptually simple, but a lot of grunt work. Strings are common in JS code :) It was implemented by the wonderful Jan de Mooij who just last week landed another nice JS memory improvement that should be released in Firefox 35: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1073700#c7 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1073700#c7
masklinn 12y ago
> The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. CPython did something similar (though more expansive, it switches between 4 different internal encodings depending on string content: ASCII, latin1, UCS2 and UCS4) in 3.3 with the PEP 393 "Flexible String Representation". I wonder if this Moz change was independently reinvented or inspired by the FSR.

frewsxcv 12y ago

I have 10 tabs open and Firefox is using 412 MB of memory. 21 GB is insane

SloopJon 12y ago
Yes, it is insane. I've actually never seen it that high before. I get annoyed when it's over one or two GB. There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it. Activity Monitor has me at 756 MB right now, but it will creep back up over the next few days.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > There has to be a leak of some kind, but I don't know how to diagnose it Nicholas Nethercote's blog[0] has many entries on memory, memory profiling &al as he's one of the big "memshrink" guys. about:memory might be a good start, after reading his memshrink entries[1] and maybe contacting him. Although the very first order of business is to check your extensions, extension leaks is the most common source of trouble (and has been for a long time). Disable everything, see what happens, then re-enable extensions one by one. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/ [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
- jason_dstillery 12y ago
  You can type 'about:memory' into the address bar and it will show you where all your memory is going.

Yoric 12y ago

Fwiw, with Firefox 36, I have a few hundred tabs (not all of them restored) for 716Mb.

ehsanu1 12y ago

Your insane memory usage is probably due to some plugin or other. Adblock is known to consume something like 40mb per tab open for example, due to injecting a large stylesheet into every single page ever opened.

tome 12y ago
Wow. Is there any way to mitigate that?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- masklinn 12y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus... http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_pluss_effect_on_firefoxs_memory_usage/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25j41u/adblock_... The only true fix is to remove it, although changing the ruleset and finding out which tab has humongous numbers of iframes is probably a good start: according to link 1 ABP has a static memory consumption of ~60MiB, plus 3~6MiB/iframe (since it's caused by the stylesheet size, I expect the precise ruleset impacts that)
- niutech 12y ago
  Don't use AdBlock, use the HOSTS file: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Push for a Firefox port of HTTPSwitchboard.
nnethercote 12y ago
> Adblock is known to consume something like 40mb per tab open for example Nope. It's more like 4 MiB per iframe. ABP is a well-written extension, and I am 99.9% certain that it is not the cause of a Firefox instance taking up 21 GB of memory. Please don't spread misinformation.

mccr8 12y ago

If you go to about:memory, you can get a better breakdown of how memory is being used. If you see something that looks out of the ordinary, please file a bug in Bugzilla and add [MemShrink] to the whiteboard!

nnethercote 12y ago
Yes, this. While extensions are often the cause of high memory usage, it's not always the case, and immediately blaming extensions makes people accuse Mozilla of passing the buck. If you ever see someone complaining about Firefox's memory usage, looking at about:memory is always the first step you should tell them to take. The amount of information can be overwhelming but in extreme cases like this it's often fairly obvious what the problem is -- look for the biggest measurement! And if it's still not obvious after that, communicating with Firefox developers (e.g. by filing a bug) usually results in progress happening.

lucb1e 12y ago

> Firefox 32.0.3 is using 21 GB on my Mac Wow, that is just insane. Checking right now, it uses ~950MB for me on GNU/Linux. That's with 14 tabs (among which 2 that use flash player) and 20 active add-ons (gestures, self-destructing cookies, header modifier, adblock plus, etc.).

nnethercote 12y ago

The Latin1 optimization is excellent. Conceptually simple, but a lot of grunt work. Strings are common in JS code :) It was implemented by the wonderful Jan de Mooij who just last week landed another nice JS memory improvement that should be released in Firefox 35: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1073700#c7 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1073700#c7

masklinn 12y ago

> The Latin1 optimization looks interesting. CPython did something similar (though more expansive, it switches between 4 different internal encodings depending on string content: ASCII, latin1, UCS2 and UCS4) in 3.3 with the PEP 393 "Flexible String Representation". I wonder if this Moz change was independently reinvented or inspired by the FSR.