14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not a secret that Google Chrome is a major resource hog on Windows, and the more memory on the device, the higher the usage of the browser as well.
And while Google has implemented a series of changes to resolve this over time, it looks like the final solution might come from none other than Microsoft.
The Redmond-based software giant has become one of the biggest contributors to the Chromium project, and in a recent commit, Microsoft proposes one very simple way to reduce memory usage.
This means that Google Chrome wouldn’t be the only browser to benefit from this update, but all browsers based on Chromium, including Microsoft’s very own Microsoft Edge. Microsoft has recently started migrating Microsoft Edge browser from EdgeHTML to Chromium and preview builds are only available on Windows 10.
Support only for Windows 10
The commit, which was spotted by WL, points to a method that would improve memory management on Windows 10.
“Change the in-proc prefetcher to load the code into Image pages and not MapFile pages to save CPU and improve memory usage, and do nothing on OS builds that enable OS PreFetch of larger files. Note this require the PreFetchVirtualMemory API, so we’ll still read the file as data/MapFile on Win7,” a Microsoft engineer explains.
What’s important to know is that such an improvement would be limited to Windows 10.
The new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser will be available cross-platform, including on older versions of Windows, like Windows 7. Edge will also make its way to macOS and possibly on Linux.
Needless to say, the aforementioned improvement is still in the commit stage, so it could take a while to make its way to Chromium browsers. But for now, it looks like Microsoft’s involvement in the development of Chromium is already paying off, not only for its users, but for everyone else.