Chrome as a single process?

[Darren Dirt]

If you are gonna do something with multiple tabs open in Chrome, and don't care if "one tab crash brings it all down", then consider this...

You may wish to right-click your Chrome shortcut, go to the "Target:" field, and append (add) the "--single-process" to the end.

For example, if I did this, mine would look like exactly this (quotation marks included):

"C:\Users\Bapa\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --single-process

This should help performance with Chrome on those older machines. If you hadn't guessed it already, this makes the entirety of Chrome all ride together in the same wagon. So much more cuddly; but if the wagon falls over, everyone dies.

Personally, I'm finding that opening Chrome, just to a SINGLE tab (i.e. Google.ca) will make like 6 or 7 processes launch (all "Chrome.exe") ... and this is on pages with no Flash, btw. wtf...


Edit: it's my extensions, apparently... but weird that even the simplest of them takes up 16MB, at launch of Chrome). Lotsa learnin' here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=5d15844c7c5ac9db&hl=en and here: http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/multi-process-architecture.html



cliffs: never mind, multiple processes using same amount of RAM as FF would (in a single process) so Panic Mode Off, the "single process" switch not really gonna help, and not a good idea:
http://blog.marcchung.com/2008/09/05/chromes-process-model-explained.html <-- a very good, brief, clear read! (also see http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/common/chrome_switches.cc?view=markup )

[Tom]

Yeah, Chrome's memory use is a big blocker for me. Firefox is bad enough, but Chrome takes it to an entirely new level. I can hardly wait till Arora or rekonq start to really stabilize, that and KDE/OpenDesktop launches its cloud service so we can get some magic browser syncing.

[Mr. Analog]

I still don't see the performance hit you guys seem to have, for some sites having a browser that can smoke through JavaScript is a must.

[Tom]

I still don't see the performance hit you guys seem to have, for some sites having a browser that can smoke through JavaScript is a must.

I don't find it slow. It just uses up a LOT more memory than any other browser with my current browsing habits.

[Darren Dirt]

I still don't see the performance hit you guys seem to have, for some sites having a browser that can smoke through JavaScript is a must.

I don't find it slow. It just uses up a LOT more memory than any other browser with my current browsing habits.

Other browsers' RAM usage is HIDDEN... with Chrome it has a separate process for each piece: the browser itself, the tab, each addon or extension, and the rendering of each, and the scripting of each. As long as you don't open too many too quick, I think Chrome handles it most optimally among modern browsers.

I just gotta stop having so many FLASH pages open at once (YT + KITH still got like 30 open, been 3 days, lol) otherwise Chrome has been fine for me, speed-wise, even with tons of tabs. But see Mr. Analog's bolded text above, HELL YEAH.

[Tom]

I still don't see the performance hit you guys seem to have, for some sites having a browser that can smoke through JavaScript is a must.

I don't find it slow. It just uses up a LOT more memory than any other browser with my current browsing habits.

Other browsers' RAM usage is HIDDEN... with Chrome it has a separate process for each piece: the browser itself, the tab, each addon or extension, and the rendering of each, and the scripting of each. As long as you don't open too many too quick, I think Chrome handles it most optimally among modern browsers.

I just gotta stop having so many FLASH pages open at once (YT + KITH still got like 30 open, been 3 days, lol) otherwise Chrome has been fine for me, speed-wise, even with tons of tabs. But see Mr. Analog's bolded text above, HELL YEAH.

You can't really call it /hidden/. Chrome uses more ram per tab, period. I find myself running out of ram and swapping with chrome long before I do with firefox.

One thing I had to do to cut down on ram use with firefox was install Flashblock. So I don't have a bunch of flash ads running in the background. Again, its not a speed issue for me. Just pure memory use issues.

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.youtube.com/html5

found via Molly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsLmdC98Avg


I tested it, it works (in Chrome, anyway) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JND9BB7ctI

[Thorin]

You can't really call it /hidden/. Chrome uses more ram per tab, period. I find myself running out of ram and swapping with chrome long before I do with firefox.

One thing I had to do to cut down on ram use with firefox was install Flashblock. So I don't have a bunch of flash ads running in the background. Again, its not a speed issue for me. Just pure memory use issues.

Given that you're a strong proponent of Linux, I assume you're running Chrome and Firefox on Linux?  What tool are you using / how are you confirming that your RAM is full and being swapped out? (and by RAM, I mean the actual physical RAM, not some abstraction within the operating system)

If we were talking about Windows I would suggest that looking at Task Manager tells you nothing about memory usage.  It does not accurately show physical memory (RAM) used per process, nor does it show what part of each process's memory space is already pre-written to the swap file, nor does it show what part of the memory space is actually the re-mapped system memory space.  I would also suggest that memory management concepts are a great deal more complicated than most people make them sound - for instance, Windows does pre-fetching and pre-swapping to try and stop process interruption due to file I/O; both these functions follow complicated algorithms to try and determine when to take action.

[Thorin]

Chrome has several settings.  Here's my customized shortcut:

"C:\Documents and Settings\tcenek\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-accelerated-compositing --enable-accelerated-2d-canvas --start-maximized

[Mr. Analog]

I guess the question is: how much RAM usage is "acceptable"?

[Tom]

I guess the question is: how much RAM usage is "acceptable"?

Not one or more GBs. Not for a few tabs. Unless I'm being extra crazy and have a couple hundred tabs open with crap like flash loaded.

[Thorin]

See, I'm not seeing that kind of usage, Tom.  That's why I'm wondering how you're measuring it.

[Tom]

See, I'm not seeing that kind of usage, Tom.  That's why I'm wondering how you're measuring it.

Maybe I'm just a heavier user (*cough*). I tend to get up towards 20+ tabs open. If I have a bunch of doc pages for Qt or KDE open, 40+ easy. But I still remember back using konqueror or earlier versions of firefox, when I had 1G ram and stuff ran just fine. These days I need 512M-1G just for firefox.

Here's firefox's current useage:

Code Select Expand


Private      +  Shared  = Total
--------------------------------------
434.2 MiB +   3.9 MiB = 438.2 MiB       firefox-bin


I have 13 tabs open in two windows. I find that a bit hard to swallow. 40-50MB/tab

And this is /after/ tweaking firefox's settings so it only caches one or two pre-rendered pages, has a small in ram cache, and some other memory saving things.

[Mr. Analog]

Is it causing any performance issues with other apps?

I have two instances of Chrome open and it's using something like 54.7 MB of RAM but it doesn't impact my system so I don't really care.

That said, Firefox is so mind-bendingly slow that I just don't use it for anything anymore.

[Tom]

Is it causing any performance issues with other apps?

I have two instances of Chrome open and it's using something like 54.7 MB of RAM but it doesn't impact my system so I don't really care.

That said, Firefox is so mind-bendingly slow that I just don't use it for anything anymore.

Over using memory tends to make me run out of memory, so yes. Even with 4G ram.. And the intel gfx drivers on linux don't like it when you run out of memory. Things start to glitch, and occasionally X might crash (yes, a bug in the driver.. I've been reporting the crashes to the intel linux developers, and they actually get fixed so woo). And then of course theres swapping. Not good for performance, specially on my laptop, got its hdd is slow.