Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#1

Post by skaul » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%
brave.com

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#2

Post by bqmjjx0kac » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

I'm not sure how impressed I should feel about saving 45 MiB these days.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#3

Post by mhitza » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how impressed I should feel about saving 45 MiB these days.

45MiB is for the default adblock setup, and it scales with the more block lists you have enabled.

I'll happily take performance improvements cause most products lack any efficiency care nowadays.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#4

Post by timeon » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how impressed I should feel about saving 45 MiB these days.

> these days

Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#5

Post by allarm » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how impressed I should feel about saving 45 MiB these days.

Very.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#6

Post by nomel » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

timeon wrote: post #4

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how impressed I should feel about saving 45 MiB these days.

> these days Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

A $130 Motorola smartphone has 8GB of RAM. This will save 0.5% RAM. It's fairly negligible on modern systems.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#7

Post by formerly_proven » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #6

timeon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these days Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

A $130 Motorola smartphone has 8GB of RAM. This will save 0.5% RAM. It's fairly negligible on modern systems.

130USD for 8GB RAM will be a good price for a bare DIMM in two weeks.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#8

Post by Retric » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #6

timeon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these days Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

A $130 Motorola smartphone has 8GB of RAM. This will save 0.5% RAM. It's fairly negligible on modern systems.

These days you’re getting 4GB at that price point and you’re losing memory to the OS thus user space memory is even more constrained.

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#9

Post by Bombthecat » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #6

timeon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these days Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

A $130 Motorola smartphone has 8GB of RAM. This will save 0.5% RAM. It's fairly negligible on modern systems.

Smartphone producers already announced to cut ram this year... Just FYI

Re: Brave overhauled its Rust adblock engine with FlatBuffers, cutting memory 75%

#10

Post by devwastaken » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #6

timeon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these days Are you referring to current RAM prices or bloat of numerous Electron apps?

A $130 Motorola smartphone has 8GB of RAM. This will save 0.5% RAM. It's fairly negligible on modern systems.

4GB of that taken by the system. more memory use with runtimes also means more cpu to track and free memory.