Windows 10 will finally fix Chrome’s biggest problem
RAM management change should make a big impact, particularly for multi-core CPUs
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Windows 10 May 2020 Updatecomes with a very useful change that should help to reduce memory usage with some apps, withGoogle Chromereportedly being one of the beneficiaries of this, and hopefully ending its reputation as a RAM-hogging browser.
The change is a pretty technical under the hood move involving ‘SegmentHeap’ memory improvements, whichMicrosoftdescribes as a “modern heap implementation that will generally reduce your [app’s] overall memory usage”.
Indeed, Microsoft is already using this for its Edgebrowser– with internal testing showing a substantial27% reductionin memory usage – and soGoogleis going to adopt it for Chrome, according to a Chromium commit spotted byWindows Latest.
The Google engineer making the commitobserved: “Experiments with per-machine opting-in to the segment heap for chrome.exe suggests that this could save hundreds of MB in the browser and Network Service utility processes, among others, on some machines. Actual results will vary widely, with the greatest savings coming on many-core machines.”
Multi-core magic
There should be some level of reduced memory usage for those running theMay 2020 Updateand Chrome, then, although as observed there could be quite a variance as to exactly how much impact will be felt, and those with multiple-core processors (which is where modern CPUs are really pushing forward hard – particularlyRyzenmodels) will get the most benefit.
Note that support for ‘SegmentHeap’ is not yet in place, and it’s not clear exactly when Google will bring this to May 2020 Update users – but it’s in the pipeline, and hopefully won’t be long.
As mentioned, this could be a huge benefit to those who use the popular Chrome browser, as certainly its biggest downside is that it can seem to utilize system memory like it’s going out of fashion – particularly when you start opening a lot of tabs.
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So this should be a compelling reason to upgrade toWindows 10May 2020 Update, although currently, Chrome users have acompelling reasonnotto upgrade, sadly (but hopefully that bug will soon be fixed).
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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