Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#41

Post by lev99 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

dgquintas wrote: post #25

rasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is entirely possible. Opera 12.x takes ~3-10MB per TAB (+the weight of the media used on the page). There is zero latency, opening new/switching tabs is instantaneous. Google devs use 16-32 core machines, often with hundreds of gigabytes ram. Why would they bother optimizing?

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Apple doesn't even offer a 32GB option for their Macbook Pro computers. 32gb is far from standard.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#42

Post by kbody » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

Try checking memory of a cryptocurrency exchange. A couple gigs after some hours of activity. I would imagine that there's a memory leak, but it's weird that this performance is consistent across all 3-4 exchanges I've been using.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#43

Post by lev99 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

akulbe wrote: post #16

glibgil wrote: post #4

> One tab on chrome takes about 100MB memory, why? Two reasons 1) Because, Chrome is ready to do something with that tab: browse the web. Do this, create a browser that doesn't use much memory when a tab is idle. Switch back to that tab and interact with the page or go to a new page. You will experience latency. It will feel slow. That's why the tab uses a lot of memory. It is staying ready at all times to be interac…

Another implied solution perhaps... don't use so many tabs? (I promise you, I'm speaking to myself as I say that. I use way too many, myself)

I'm currently at 30 Firefox tabs and it's using 1.24gb of memory. Much less than 100mb/tab.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#44

Post by lev99 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #30

Waterluvian wrote: post #3

I'm eager for info too. But while we're waiting, I have a genuine, not snarky, question too: does this ever actually negatively impact people's use of their computer? I can't recall ever feeling like my browser having lots of tabs open has changed the experience. RAM and resource usage hasn't been on my mind in years.

Yes indeed. My computer at work has 16 GB. It gets slow. Every now and then, I'll open a web page that pushes things past a limit. The browser becomes completely unresponsive and sometimes I can't even move my mouse. While I'm suffering from running out of memory, the browser decides to use up even more memory to pop up a dialog to taunt me about it. This can even happen without user action, for example when a page a…

Why haven't you switched to wayland yet?

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#45

Post by maccam94 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

IvanK_net wrote: post #32

In modern days, it is usually a web page / app, who takes memory, not the browser environment itself. E.g. I am developing a web photo editor https://www.Photopea.com . When you open large documents (dozens of layers in high resolution), it can use 4 GB of RAM or even more. That is simply because decompressed images are large. No matter what browser you use. But I am still shocked about the memory requirements of som…

GMail has a ton of Javascript. The basic HTML interface uses closer to 10MB (a bit tricky for me to measure in Firefox, since it doesn't use one process per tab)

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#46

Post by megaman22 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

dgquintas wrote: post #25

rasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is entirely possible. Opera 12.x takes ~3-10MB per TAB (+the weight of the media used on the page). There is zero latency, opening new/switching tabs is instantaneous. Google devs use 16-32 core machines, often with hundreds of gigabytes ram. Why would they bother optimizing?

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Are you talking standard Google developer workstation specs? That's not much different than the thinkservers we use as desktops. But considerably beefier than what non-desktop devs might be accustomed to.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#47

Post by cpcallen » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:17 AM UTC

Dolores12 wrote: post #37

dgquintas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

You are so wrong. Check here http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ these are gaming, most powerful PCs people are using. 8gb is 44% of all users.

I believe dgquintas is describing the standard engineering workstation at Google.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#48

Post by lbotos » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:18 AM UTC

Dolores12 wrote: post #37

dgquintas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

You are so wrong. Check here http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ these are gaming, most powerful PCs people are using. 8gb is 44% of all users.

Depends on how you define "power". I'm sure devs often have more RAM for VMs etc, where gamers have more GPU for graphics. I'm building a gaming rig right now, the games I wanna play 8GB of RAM is plenty.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#49

Post by netheril96 » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:18 AM UTC

dgquintas wrote: post #25

rasz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is entirely possible. Opera 12.x takes ~3-10MB per TAB (+the weight of the media used on the page). There is zero latency, opening new/switching tabs is instantaneous. Google devs use 16-32 core machines, often with hundreds of gigabytes ram. Why would they bother optimizing?

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Batch reply to the other comments: the "standard machine" here refers to what Google developers are using.

Re: Ask HN: One tab on Chrome takes about 100MB memory, why?

#50

Post by xbmcuser » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

burfog wrote: post #30

Waterluvian wrote: post #3

I'm eager for info too. But while we're waiting, I have a genuine, not snarky, question too: does this ever actually negatively impact people's use of their computer? I can't recall ever feeling like my browser having lots of tabs open has changed the experience. RAM and resource usage hasn't been on my mind in years.

Yes indeed. My computer at work has 16 GB. It gets slow. Every now and then, I'll open a web page that pushes things past a limit. The browser becomes completely unresponsive and sometimes I can't even move my mouse. While I'm suffering from running out of memory, the browser decides to use up even more memory to pop up a dialog to taunt me about it. This can even happen without user action, for example when a page a…

Why don't you stop opening so many tabs. People complain about memory usage by chrome and other browsers but at the same time they are the ones that are using tabs as bookmarks instead of actually using bookmarks. 100tabs open out which 50 they will probably never go back to.