Experimental result that 'Chrome consumes 10 times more memory than Safari on macOS'
Chrome RAM / CPU usage vs. Safari vs. Flotato
https://www.flotato.com/post/memory-chrome-safari-flotato
Mr. Just prepares MacBook Pro (16 inches) with built-in Intel Core i9 (2.4GHz), DDR4 32GB, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M. Then, I built a macOS Big Sur environment in a virtual machine and conducted a comparative experiment with the newly installed Chrome / Safari while taking snapshots of the usage status at 4 millisecond intervals with psrecord .
◆ First experiment
I opened Twitter and Gmail in Chrome and Safari in separate tabs. First, below is a bar graph showing the average memory usage when using Twitter in one tab. You can see that Safari uses 73MB and Flotato uses 63MB, while Chrome uses 730MB, which is about 10 times as much memory.
With 2 tabs open, if you graph the memory usage (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis) of Chrome, it looks like this. Changes in CPU usage are also shown in dark waveforms. The black dots in the graph indicate the timing of work, from the left 'when you enter the URL of Twitter' 'when Twitter is displayed for the first time' 'when you get the feed' 'when you open the second tab' 'When you load Gmail from your favorites' 'When Gmail is first displayed' 'When you open your inbox' 'When you view the newsletter' 'When you close Chrome', and finally Chrome's memory usage has exceeded 1GB.
On the other hand, Safari's memory usage was stable at 80MB. The black dots on the graph indicate the timing of work from the left, and from the left, 'when you enter the URL of Twitter', 'when Twitter is first displayed', 'when you get the feed', 'second' When you open the tab, when you open your Gmail inbox, when you view the newsletter, and when you close Safari.
In addition, it is said that the memory usage of Flotato is about 10MB lower than that of Safari. The graph below shows Safari's memory usage on the left and Flotato's memory usage on the right. According to Just, Flotato will display the mobile version by default if there is a mobile version on the page, so it is difficult to explain that it is a correct comparison, but 'Safari and Flotato Is almost the same. '
◆ Second experiment
Next, Just conducted a stress test that opens 54 tabs in Chrome and Safari. The bar graph below compares the memory usage per tab, and you can see that Chroem uses about 24 times as much memory as Safari.
Furthermore, the graph below is a graph of the transition of memory usage (vertical axis) according to time (horizontal axis). Changes in CPU usage are also shown in dark waveforms. As you open 54 tabs, Chrome (left)'s memory usage grows proportionally, eventually surpassing 15GB. On the other hand, Safari (right) uses almost no change when you open a tab.
◆ Consideration
Just said he was skeptical that the result was wrong because he was using much more memory than Chrome expected when he finished the first test, but the second. In the test of, Chrome's memory usage was also very high.
However, Just said, 'The results of these two tests alone do not tell us everything.' Mr. Just said, 'Chrome uses a lot of memory to keep the browser in a fast and responsive state.' 'Chrome is a kind of Chrome only when macOS apps other than Chrome are not running. It's great considering using macOS as a kind of boot loader as an operating system, 'he said, saying that it's not necessarily a bad thing for Chrome to use a lot of memory.
Even so, when running applications such as Photoshop and Final Cut other than Chrome, the memory usage will increase further, which will be a big problem in operation.
Also, in Chrome, the CPU usage rate also increases, so the air cooling fan installed in the MacBook Pro runs often, so the podcast that I always listen to could hardly be heard. Mr. Just said that he was worried that the fans stopped when Chrome was closed, so he conducted this experiment.
'It may not look as good as it looks, but it's true that I forgot the sound of the air-cooled fan after switching to Safari.'
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in Software, Posted by log1i_yk