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by krzyk 3285 days ago
Why? You can change the number of processes to e.g. 1000 and you will basically get one process per tab until you reach 1000 tabs, and if you do, you will need really a large amount of memory.

one process per tab is specifically why I quit using chrome, it wasn't working even for small amount of tabs (100) it ate RAM like crazy. Mozillas approach is better, user can control how many processes are created - users have control.
1 comments
deprave 3285 days ago
It's simple. There is no way Firefox can guarantee anywhere near the level of stability and security Chrome offers without a process per tab. OS primitives operate in terms of processes (scheduling, memory, sandboxing, and so on) and Firefox will not be able to use any of them. I really want to use Firefox, but I'm almost certain not doing a process-per-tab will be the last nail in its coffin. The code will be more complex to maintain, and no advantages in security or performance will be gained, leading to less users and thus less maintainers.

If there was one thing that caught my attention with Chrome back when it was released (2008?) it was its reliance on OS primitives (processes) as the building blocks for a stable and secure browser. This is essentially the same argument the Varnish folks did when comparing to other proxy solutions like Squid back in the day. I don't understand why Firefox is taking this route.

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pcwalton 3285 days ago
> There is no way Firefox can guarantee anywhere near the level of stability and security Chrome offers without a process per tab.

It has no security benefit without Site Isolation (which isn't unconditionally a process per origin either for performance reasons). In both Chrome and Firefox, any site can embed another cross-origin site in an iframe, and it will share a process (and a main thread).

Chrome does not use an unconditional process per tab. Nobody would.

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AgentME 3285 days ago
I believe Chrome is moving to having cross-domain iframes in separate processes. I remember seeing a flag for it.
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pcwalton 3285 days ago
Not for all sites unconditionally, only for those that opt into site isolation or are high value. Too many sites have tons of iframes to do otherwise.
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eeperson 3285 days ago
Chrome doesn't appear to default to process per tab either. See: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/process...
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