As per a new blog post, Google revealed that fixes for Spectre has caused Chrome to use more memory.
Google Chrome has been lauded for its speed and performance, but the browser has also been equally criticised for using a lot of memory compared to other web browsers like Firefox and Opera. Things likely to get worse and you can blame the recent Spectre CPU vulnerability that attacked most Intel, AMD and ARM processors earlier this year. As per a new blog post, Google revealed that fixes for Spectre has caused Chrome to use more memory.
The blog post details that in order to mitigate newly discovered security risks like Spectre, Google enabled a security feature called Site Isolation on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS. The feature is enabled by default and essentially prevents attacks that use the speculative execution features of processors to access parts of memory to steal data and login information. Unfortunately, the feature also requires more RAM consumption as well – a good 10 per cent increase in memory usage to be precise.
Site Isolation does cause Chrome to create more renderer processes, which comes with performance tradeoffs, » admits Google software engineer Charlie Reis. « There is about a 10-13 percent total memory overhead in real workloads due to the larger number of processes. » Since the feature is enabled across all platforms, mostly every Chrome user is going to feel the increase in RAM usage, and this will particularly affect users with laptops or PCs with 4GB RAM or lower.
Google says that this is just one phase of the Site Isolation project and that it is working on improving the security as well as optimising the browser to keep it fast and effective. Users should expect some improvements in the coming months, but for now expect some serious RAM usage while browsing through Chrome.
In comparison, Firefox has seen a sort of renaissance after getting a major overhaul not too long ago. Firefox Quantum has impressed one and all with its speed and performance as well as its limited memory usage, becoming the default browser for many once again.
A separate report also suggests Google is working on a Chrome redesign, which has been spotted on Canary for Windows, Linux and Chrome OS. Canary is an experimental version of Chrome where Google adds the latest updates to Chrome before pushing it out to the main browser. As per the reports, the new material design brings a new address bar, refreshed tab shapes and colours, redesigned three-dot dropdown menu, among other things.
