kallasoft

Marc Chung has posted an in-depth analysis of Google’sChrome Browser process model. Why this is interesting is because the new process model in Chrome is one of the most powerful aspects of the browser, allowing it to render JavaScript-heavy web applications much faster without blocking the entire browser process hung in a render loop (something you may be familiar with when you login to Gmail, Google Calendar or any other heavy webapp and notice the browser freeze up or grind to a halt while that initial web page loads).

There are 4 different process models that Chrome can utilize while running, and Marc describes them as such:

• Process-as-site-instance: This is Chrome’s default behavior and is called process-per-site-instance. It’s intuitive in that your tab count is (more or less) your process count.
• Process-per-site: A single renderer is shared across all sites belonging to the same base domain (e.g. mail.google.com docs.google.com and google.com)
• Process-per-tab: Each tab you have open has it’s own process.
• Single-process: A single process is used by the entire Chrome browser, giving us the behavior we see today with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Check out Marc’s post for a much more in-depth analysis of each mode, how to set them and what they do.