Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time
This page is just a place for me to keep track of contributed memory to web pages over time. I consider the contributed memory to web pages to be more important than the own memory footprint. Unfortunately, a user can not see how much memory overhead an extension contributes to a web page without running a benchmark like the one here. Keep in mind the results here are only for one basic web page.
Using Acid Test 3, a simple web page with embedded iframes, the web page opened in a new tab for each extension after a browser restart.
Each extension was tested alone, with no other extensions enabled. Leaving the browser idle for more than 1 minute ensured that the web page memory was garbage collected.
Added the following steps for benchmarks dated December 2014 and later:
- Click "Stats for nerds" in "Task Manager": "About memory" opens.
- Wait a few seconds.
- Close the "About memory" tab.
- Wait a few seconds.
- Repeat all the above steps until the memory footprint of the Acid Test tab stops decreasing.
I found that this was now necessary as it appears the Chromium garbage collector has become rather lazy. The above steps force it into action.
- Chromium 39.0.2171.65 64-bit (Linux)
- uBlock Origin (uBO) 0.8.2.2 (default lists: EasyList, Peter Lowe’s Ad server, EasyPrivacy, malware domain lists, Fanboy’s Social Blocking List)
- Adblock Plus (ABP) 1.8.8 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)
Summary of results:
- Reference memory usage for the web page: 23 MB
- uBO adds over 10 MB
- ABP adds over 33 MB
- ABP with the same filter lists as uBO adds over 46 MB
No extension (reference):
uBO:
ABP:
ABP with same filter lists as uBO:
- Chromium 37.0.2062.94 64-bit (Linux)
- uBO 0.6.2.1 (default filter lists)
- ABP 1.8.5 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)
Summary of results:
- Reference memory usage for the web page: 22 MB
- uBO Plus adds over 9 MB
- ABP adds over 32 MB
No extension (reference):
uBO:
ABP:
Observations:
The last time I ran this benchmark was on Chromium 34 64-bit, and it does appear that Chromium 37 is causing web pages to consume more memory. The reference result went from ~17 MB to ~22 MB.