Google has made significant changes to its Chrome browser in the last few months, improving its performance on macOS and Android. The changes, including better HTML parsing, improved pointer compression, better caching, and better memory management, have yielded a 10% improvement in Speedometer 2.1 benchmark results.
The improvements were discovered during targeted optimizations for frequently used JS Object.prototype.toString and Array.prototype.join functions, as well as InterpolableColor in CSS. Additionally, the team added a special fast path for parsing innerHTML, a common way to update the DOM in JavaScript.
The improvements in pointer compaction, which save memory, are used by both V8 and Oilpan (a garbage collector for DOM objects) to avoid compressing high-traffic fields. The frequently accessed objects like JavaScript were moved to the top of the memory base to enable faster machine code access.
For Chrome on Android, Google developed a version using compiler flags prioritmacizing speed over binary size. The version delivered up to 30% performance improvements on the Speedometer 2.1 benchmark on high-end devices.
Chrome has been the world’s most popular browser since its release in 2008, according to StatCounter data for March 2023. With 64.8% market share, it leads the race, followed by Safari with 19.5%.
The improvements made by Google to Chrome aim to provide a better web experience for all web users. With the optimization work spilling over to Apple’s WebKit engine, these changes could have a broader impact on web browsing performance. It’s exciting to see Chrome progress towards faster and more efficient web browsing, benefiting users worldwide.
