Chrome 89 increases desktop memory efficiency with PartitionAlloc

Enlarge / This week's new Chrome build doesn't look any different, but it introduces plenty of under-the-hood performance and efficiency improvements. (credit: Jim Salter / Pixabay)

Google Chrome version 89 began rolling out to users in the stable channel on March 2 and should be on most people's machines by now. The new build offers significant memory savings on 64-bit Windows platforms thanks to increased use of Google's PartitionAlloc memory allocator. On macOS, Chrome 89 plays catch-up and gets closer to the performance of the flagship Windows builds.

Chrome on Windows

Google says use of RAM in 64-bit Windows is down up to 22 percent in the browser process, 8 percent in the renderer, and 3 percent in the GPU. The company also claims a 9 percent decrease in latency, meaning a more responsive browser. The improvements are largely due to intercepting malloc() calls with PartitionAlloc.

Chrome 89 has also gotten significantly more aggressive about discarding unused RAM. When you scroll resources such as large images off-screen in the foreground tab, Chrome discards the memory those resources used. The change impacts background tabs as well, resulting in a savings of as much as 100MiB per tab.

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