Upcoming Chrome 55 will use up to 66% less memory in some scenarios

[BoraMurdar]

While Chrome has become one of the most popular browsers in the world, it’s still one of the least efficient ones out there. For years now its use of resources, whether it’s battery power, processing, or memory, has been well documented – and amply complained about. Luckily, Google is working on improving things with an upcoming release.

After the Chrome team decided to lower battery usage in the past 10 versions of the browser, it now looks like they’re ready to finally minimize Chrome’s memory use. In a blog post, the engineering team describes how tweaking the V8 Javascript engine, and manually coding some fixes, it managed to achieve some very impressive results.

According to their tests, Chrome version M55, expected to be publicly launched by the end of the year, managed to use up substantially less memory. Going by memory used by V8 alone, there’s about a 50% reduction on average, as the chart below shows.

Full story

 

[CMLew]

So we'll have more unused memory.... what a waste....

 

[BoraMurdar]

So we'll have more unused memory.... what a waste....

Yeah It will only benefit the people with a little operating memory

 

[yigido]

Other Chromium forks can be more lighter?

 

[CMLew]

Yeah It will only benefit the people with a little operating memory

Precisely.. With current trend, I doubt any decent desktop/laptop would have 2GB memory. RAMs are dirt cheap these days.

 

[Omnipotent]

This is great, i have a bad habit of keeping a lot of tabs open.

 

[Pat MacKnife]

My 2 daughters will be pleased with chrome on their laptop with 4 GB RAM

 

[Wave]

Great news, any improvements to resource usage with Google Chrome would be handy... Since I love Chrome but it's definitely not the most efficient and can be a huge resource hog at times.

Other Chromium forks can be more lighter?

I think the update is just for the Google Chrome version since Google are most likely implementing it into their own version as opposed to contributing to the Chromium engine which is open-source to the community. But I could be wrong... Can anyone correct me please?

 

[yigido]

I think the update is just for the Google Chrome version since Google are most likely implementing it into their own version as opposed to contributing to the Chromium engine which is open-source to the community. But I could be wrong... Can anyone correct me please?

Actually, I found these and I think it can be used in other Chromium based browsers.. Dragon, Opera etc.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)
https://github.com/v8/v8 (just released a version 3 hours ago)
It is open source ?

 

[Wave]

It is open source ?

It looks like it - if Google are directly updating their work to that git hub repository and using that same implementation then I'd think so.

 

[yigido]

It looks like it - if Google are directly updating their work to that git hub repository and using that same implementation then I'd think so.

So we should be happy as other chromium forked users

 

[Wave]

So we should be happy as other chromium forked users

I believe other browsers like Opera make use of Chromium engine too, so hopefully it will obtain the new updates too... (to improve memory optimisation). I haven't used Opera in a long time so I am not quite sure how it's optimisation is in terms of resource usage today... But I'll check on it sometime soon, and hopefully it receives the new updates for memory optimisation too!

 

[Pat MacKnife]

Is this another browser ?
Ungoogled-Chromium

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/05/ungoogled-chromium-removes-google-traces-from-chromium/

 

[yigido]

I believe other browsers like Opera make use of Chromium engine too, so hopefully it will obtain the new updates too... (to improve memory optimisation). I haven't used Opera in a long time so I am not quite sure how it's optimisation is in terms of resource usage today... But I'll check on it sometime soon, and hopefully it receives the new updates for memory optimisation too!

Opera developers works with Google developer on Chromium core
Opera announced it before, it was also about "memory consumpsion of Chromium" Opera step up before than Google guys.
https://dev.opera.com/blog/reducing-memory-use/
I hope Opera will be more light with this update.

Opera has 38 commits on V8 Javascript engine already and much more on Chromium core.
https://operasoftware.github.io/upstreamtools/

 

[Wave]

Opera developers works with Google developer on Chromium core
Opera announced it before, it was also about "memory consumpsion of Chromium" Opera step up before than Google guys.
https://dev.opera.com/blog/reducing-memory-use/
I hope Opera will be more light with this update.

I never knew about this haha, but I knew Opera must have utilised Chromium engine/Google components because if you make an extension for Google Chrome it will be compatible with Opera (at least depending on the circumstances).

Thanks for that info, I'll check the link.

 

[yigido]

I never knew about this haha, but I knew Opera must have utilised Chromium engine/Google components because if you make an extension for Google Chrome it will be compatible with Opera (at least depending on the circumstances).

Thanks for that info, I'll check the link.

Check the other links, I updated my previous post Opera guys are great as always.
Just download the .crx (the extension's file type) and drag&drop it to opera://extensions
Yay! We can use all Chrome Web Store extensions with Opera.

 

[Wave]

Check the other links, I updated my previous post Opera guys are great as always.
Just download the .crx (the extension's file type) and drag&drop it to opera://extensions
Yay! We can use all Chrome Web Store extensions with Opera.

Yeah, I remember back when I was doing some studying on Google Chrome extension development... And for some reason I tried to load it into Opera and it worked, so I did more research/discovered it also utilised Chromium engine, etc. Before that incident I never really knew.

And I'm checking the links for the info now.

 

[kev216]

That's very good news! Chrome has always been a huge RAM eater and I'm happy the finally decide to make it a bit more less memory hungry.
I'm sure it will be in the Chromium forked browsers too if they will reach the Chromium build in which Google will release these improvements.

Opera developers works with Google developer on Chromium core
Opera announced it before, it was also about "memory consumpsion of Chromium" Opera step up before than Google guys.
https://dev.opera.com/blog/reducing-memory-use/
I hope Opera will be more light with this update.

Opera has 38 commits on V8 Javascript engine already and much more on Chromium core.
https://operasoftware.github.io/upstreamtools/

Yes they work together which only improves the work done on Chromium. For example Opera also started to use heap compaction since version 39. (see http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/07/memory-usage-opera-heap-compaction/). But afaik this was only introduced in Opera and not yet in Chromium itself, but they planned to release it in Chromium too. Maybe this also is related to what Google now announces?

 

[yigido]

Yes they work together which only improves the work done on Chromium. For example Opera also started to use heap compaction since version 39. (see http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/07/memory-usage-opera-heap-compaction/). But afaik this was only introduced in Opera and not yet in Chromium itself, but they planned to release it in Chromium too. Maybe this also is related to what Google now announces?

Nice find!
In fact, it seems the same thing..So this tme Google follows the Opera

 

[yigido]

@Wave if you are testing Opera,
check this flag
opera:flags/#enable-ignition

It enables V8 engine