Google’s Chrome Web browser has long been plagued by power and battery-management problems, but its next major release might hog fewer PC resources thanks to improved JavaScript handling.
Set for release on Dec. 6, Chrome 55 will take advantage of an update to JavaScript that reduces the memory footprint of major websites like The New York Times, Reddit, and YouTube, according to Engadget. Those and other similar sites will consume 50 percent less RAM than they do in the current stable version of Chrome.
One of biggest JavaScript improvements is reducing background memory consumption. Chrome pre-loads websites in the background, but often doesn’t release the memory it uses to do so once the loading is complete.
Using a memory visualization tool, programmers working on the V8 JavaScript project discovered that “the background parser would keep an entire zone alive long after the code was already compiled,” according to a blog post. “By immediately freeing the zone after compilation, we reduced the lifetime of zones significantly which resulted in reduced average and peak memory usage.”
Eliminating JavaScript’s background memory consumption will build on Google’s earlier efforts to streamline Chrome’s background loading. Last fall, Google announced it had trained Chrome to identify when a webpage isn’t busy, and use that free time to clean up unused memory.
In June, Microsoft claimed that its Edge browser is more power-efficient than Chrome. Redmond said that Chrome used up a laptop’s battery three hours sooner than Edge did in a test of wireless movie streaming.
Independent tests have also confirmed Chrome’s reputation as a memory hog. Firefox came in first in PCMag’s recent memory test, nearly halving Chrome’s memory usage.
