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

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

#151

Post by nkkollaw »

tsukikage wrote: post #130
nkkollaw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aww, come on. People want and expect websites to be very close to web applications that react to who you are, what actions you take on the page and a myriad of other factors. That's just not possible with static HTML.

I have a whole separate rant about HTML5+CSS and Turing completeness, but responding with that here would make me part of the problem. In all seriousness, we need waaay fewer layers of dynamic abstraction than actually get employed to solve most problems.

If tools are used incorrectly, it's a problem. But don't say that static HTML was better or would be better, because it simply wouldn't on a high percentage of websites.

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

#152

Post by zamber »

godelmachine wrote: post #81

Well, here is one thing I observed. Chrome allocates different process for every tab. Firefox doesn't do that. Just one process for all tab. Suppose I open 10 tabs each on Chrome & Firefox. And suppose every tab needs 100MB of memory. If you look up in task manager - Chrome - 10 tabs - 10 different process - 100MB each = 1000MB = roughly 1GB Firefox - 10 tabs - only 1 process - 1000MB = roughly 1GB for that one proce…

Currently I have ~90 tabs open in Firefox. It uses 3.3GB of RAM and 1-3% of CPU (on a i7 though).

Closing and reopening is faster than doing the same in Chrome with far less tabs open.

IMO it's they usual software cycle of bloat -> optimization -> new features -> bloat -> optimization...

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

#153

Post by posterboy »

It's rather obvious that chrome isn't intended for heavy duty as the tab bar becoming unusable above ~20 tabs. So I use multiple windows instead and max out 8 gb pretty quickly. I'm just glad it backs up dynamic content like edited form fields before those tabs get crashed to free up space. Also, it's quick to reach 7.9 gb, but goes a long way on that last ~100 mb. But of course a long running js leaking memory on some news site can bring it down.

Two times in a month the login manager crashed and I couldn't get back in from lock screen without killing a few processes manually on console. I'm going back to Firefox with noscript and tree style tabs, as soon as I finished working on all those open tabs ... so, probably never. I don't want to miss the history search and security of chromium.

So I should learn to use the history sidebar instead of tree tabs, and use the tab bar like a ring buffer, not a stack. And I should try deactivating js globaly, if there is a whitelist built-in.

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

#154

Post by MrMid »

Klathmon wrote: post #63
DennisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm perfectly willing to wait a second for the page to be reloaded from solid-state storage, if I haven't visited the page for an hour or more. Some people might say I shouldn't keep hundreds of tabs open for weeks. But I'm an old guy, and by my standards my laptop is a freakin supercomputer, so in my mind it should be able to handle all the web pages I can manually throw at it.

Well chrome will "suspend" tabs when it sees your system is running low on memory, and will resume them when you switch to them. But it's a much harder problem to solve than many think. For example, if they start "suspending" my slack tab, or my email tab, and I begin missing messages I'm going to be quite upset...

Firefox keeps alive pinned tabs, don't know about chrome

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

#155

Post by logicallee »

tsukikage wrote: post #123

Because it is 2018 and people have forgotten how to static HTML. All that lovely rendering code in your browser goes unused as people rewrite it in Javascript, badly; or even in C++ and then compile to web assembly, that’s all the rage now, because why stick with one layer of abstraction when you can involve three? Oh, and of course everyone rolls their own, so that website with the dancing pigs not only has its own…

Open a few hundred tabs on Android (where no Google developers have special 64 GB, or even 32 GB of RAM phones) and you will see it does just fine. So it's not about what the web is or isn't.

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

#156

Post by oedenfield »

nkkollaw wrote: post #150
king_magic wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally disagree. I don’t think ‘people’ really do want that. That reminds me of the thinking during the 90’s and early 00’s that everyone somehow must want 10 browser toolbars that spam them with ads all the time.

Obviously, it depends on the site. However, when you're on YouTube you don't want the site to suggest videos you're not interested in (or Amazon, products). When you're on a blog, you don't want "related articles" to list articles you've already read. Etc. Etc. I don't know if people want this--in part because they don't even realize these features exist--but I'm sure the opposite can be annoying. It also depends how…

As a user of both YouTube and Amazon.com I really don't want either recommendations you mentioned. I go to YouTube to watch specific videos and I go to Amazon to buy specific things. Those organizations want to give me recommendations but if I could turn them off and gain performance I would do that in a heartbeat.

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

#157

Post by hawski »

golergka wrote: post #122
hawski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you need to browse in the darkness. It should be implemented in the OS, but it isn't. I don't have a mobile OS on my TODO list. The night mode would be just a small additional setting on top of a color scheme selection.

If it's not implemented in the OS, wouldn't it make more sense to create an OS-level utility?

OS-level utility needs APIs that are not there in case of Android. All night-mode apps for Android are just a reddish overlay. It often falls apart when you something can't go through the overlay like AFAIR system passwords. I tried to use apps, but met with this wall several times.

Android did have a night mode, but it was experimental and removed in later versions. So other than alternative ROMs there's nothing there.

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

#158

Post by posterboy »

golergka wrote: post #122
hawski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you need to browse in the darkness. It should be implemented in the OS, but it isn't. I don't have a mobile OS on my TODO list. The night mode would be just a small additional setting on top of a color scheme selection.

If it's not implemented in the OS, wouldn't it make more sense to create an OS-level utility?

it is implemented in android, iirc

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

#159

Post by gravypod »

IncRnd wrote: post #62
KindOne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What CPU/mobo you using?

The one I mentioned is a precision w/ 2x2680. These dropped in price and flooded the market after leases finished. There are too many problems and finicky nonsense with adding extra video cards (due to the power supply). I also have an HP w/ 2x2680v2 128GB on the way. Using the HP I'll be able use for some projects a few of the old nanos and 295x2s I have sitting around. These are so cheap now.

Do you have any model numbers or suggestions as to where to buy this sort of stuff? I want to get (always wanted really) a dev server for home.

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

#160

Post by tim333 »

tsukikage wrote: post #123

Because it is 2018 and people have forgotten how to static HTML. All that lovely rendering code in your browser goes unused as people rewrite it in Javascript, badly; or even in C++ and then compile to web assembly, that’s all the rage now, because why stick with one layer of abstraction when you can involve three? Oh, and of course everyone rolls their own, so that website with the dancing pigs not only has its own…

However if you open a static HTML website such as the tasteful http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ it still shows 122 MB used in Chrome Task Manager in spite of the source being 0.005 MB.
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