Google will use new Windows 10 2004 feature to reduce Chrome's RAM hogging nature

With the latest version of Windows 10 (the May 2020 Update), Microsoft introduced Segment Heap memory management improvements (originally only for “Modern” apps and some system apps such as Edge)  which can help to reduce the memory usage to Win32 apps.

Microsoft says Segment heap is a modern heap implementation that will generally reduce your overall memory usage.

In Microsoft’s testing using “SegmentHeap” can reduce the RAM usage of the Chromium-powered Edge by up to 27%.

Now, in a new commit, a Chrome engineer said they will add support for the feature to the Chrome manifest, meaning on Windows 10 2004 the browser will switch to Segment Heap rather than the legacy heap.

“Experiments with per-machine opting-in to the segment heap for chrome.exe suggests that this could save hundreds of MB in the browser and Network Service utility processes, among others, on .some machines. Actual results will vary widely, with the greatest savings coming on many-core machines,”

The feature will roll out once Google is able to build Chrome with the Windows 10 Build 19041.0 SDK, though this is currently blocked due to unexplained build failures.

“We could enable it now but that would cause build warnings. Therefore enabling it is blocked on a switch to the Windows 10.0.19041.0 SDK which is currently blocked on some mysterious build failures,” the engineer notes.

A 27% improvement in the main RAM user on modern PCs would be a massive improvement, so we hope this feature becomes available sooner rather than later.

Via WindowsLatest