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Google Chrome Browser - Good @ First Look But Hogs Memory Feature "One Process For One Tab"

Hello Folks !!!

Here is my two cents about much hyped Google Chrome Browser. There has been a huge ripple and hype in the web since Google released the Chrome browser. Like many users i was curious about Google Browser and happened to watch Chrome release technical video. At first I really liked chrome, specially its speed and ease of use. As an ardent developer / tester of Microsoft Mobile & Desktop technologies and I like the services that Google provides. When Google and MS competes it is a win win situation for me, the consumer.

Google Search v/s Microsoft Live Search
Google Maps v/s Microsoft Maps
Google Mail v/s MS Mail (Hotmail , Live ...etc)

Many situations Google had little or more upper hand but one needs to understand that it is Microsoft Platform which made Google so popular (Arguable item :) ). Now Google is trying to compete in browser are with bigwigs like Firefox , Opera and IE.

I am sure you have read many blogs by now hearing praises & appreciating Chrome, and Even i am positive about Chrome ... but i am really shocked with its memory usage. Yes .. that true it hogs memory like anything @ default settings.

My favorite browsers are FireFox and Internet Explorer. I like Firefox a lot and i do use IE to read some localized content websites (Sometime other browser are poor or does not have enough font support ). Installation of chrome was pretty easy and straight forward. it appears to be lightweight application.
1. Best part of Chrome is you don't have to install any fonts and bother about font installation to read local content.
2. Browser has built in google suggest which is kind of pretty cool and i really liked it.
3. Chrome has many process models like " One process for one site, One process per tab and single process for entire browser".
3. Google has advertised that unlike other browsers where crash in one tab forces your to close entire browser application ( that means all other websites who are running on different tabs along with the culprit tab had to close down which is kind of irks you) chrome does not force you to do so instead it only closes down the tab which got crashed.. Google chrome advertised that "One process for one tab" which means you don't have to close down other tabs if you get into situation where one of the tab is crashed or something similar to that. It is a kind of cool. But it comes with a COST i.e "Every tab runs as seperate process and it hogs memory like anything ".


Having said that Chrome hogs lot memory It consumes memory for each and every tab. Imagine you are BIG internet Junkie and browse at least 20 sites at any given point of time. I have observed that each Tab takes memory anywhere between 5MB to 40 MB depends on the kind of site you open. Let us assume that on an average each site takes 15MB which means 15 MB X 20 tabs = 300 MB alone for browses ..whack ... its too much.

Is there any solution to this issue : Yes there is, but again if we use that solution we lose that functionality of much hyped and advertised "One Process for One Tab / One Process for One site". Anyways read below for solution.

 Chrome supports other process models as well. Here are the process models for Chrome browser

1. Process Per Site: One process per website. If you're on mail.google.com, and you navigate to hotmail.com, the tab's underlying process may switch. In this case, Chrome switches your browsing context because you navigated to another site.

2. Process Per Tab: In this model, tabs have their own process but unlike process-per-site-instance and process-per-site, none of the underlying process switching logic is applied.

Each tab has it's own process for the life of tab, so a tab will never change process even if a user consecutively visits hotmail.com, gmail.com, and ymail.com.

3. Single Process - You can run Chrome in a mode that combines the Browser and Renderer process into a single process. This makes Chrome behave a lot like the browsers we have today.

So Single Process Mode takes low memory to operate browse but again ALL much hyped or advertised Functionality does not yield GREAT result. Hope Google hearing this and make their product unique and stable (I am confident they do :) .... ).

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