FireFox Users: Firefox devs locate a source of memory-bloat

[TequilaChaser]

Firefox devs locate a source of memory-bloat

Date Posted: 5 July 2011, 17:22


Reference Article Link: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Firefox-developers-locate-a-source-of-bloat-1273916.html

Firefox devs locate a source of memory-bloat

Firefox developers have been hunting down memory issues in Firefox and appear to have located a major one in the JavaScript engine. It appears, according to the bug report, that memory was fragmenting within the JavaScript engine due to it keeping 1MB chunks alive for long living system objects.

The developers then created a patch to reduce fragmentation by taking account of system objects and the results were described as "ridiculously good". In the test, memory usage without the patch was measured at around 239 MB and with the patch at 189 MB; after running "minimise memory usage", the unpatched Firefox was using 108 MB while the patched version was using only 21 MB, five times better. Together with a fix for bug 656120 – which will see the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine running garbage collection far more frequently – these changes should see Firefox consuming less memory.

The changes though will only appear in Firefox 7; Firefox 6 is about to go beta, so Firefox 7 is the earliest the modifications can appear; Firefox 7 is due to arrive in the Aurora channel at the same time as 6 goes beta.

for those that use Firefox Browser & Javascript


hope this helps


TC

[Drano]

Might essplain why I have Firefox crash out on me sporadically from time to time. Sometimes it won't do it for days at a time, sometimes it does it over and over. Running V5.0 at present.

[RTHolmes]

fixed for v7? if v6 is in beta why not delay the release and patch that version

FF v4 has become really unstable for me on XP, ive been using Safari just because FF cant stay up for more than 20 page views. that crashes too, just no where near as much. I suspected it was JS, not surprising really its used far too much, most annoyingly for stuff that should be done on the server side. the really irritating thing is that v3 was always solid as a rock for me. 

[guncrasher]

that's weird holmes, i have FF 5.0 and have zero problems.  actually, i have never had a problem since i started using FF 4 years ago.  I actually dont remember ever using IE, lol.

semp