Google Chrome Receives a Significant Speed Boost With Under-the-Hood Performance Improvements

Google makes several adjustments to its popular browser, leading to a 10% increase on Apple’s Speedometer 2.1 browser benchmark.

Google’s Chrome web browser has received a significant speed boost, thanks to several under-the-hood performance improvements. These changes have led to a new performance milestone across Mac and Android, resulting in a 10% increase on Apple’s Speedometer 2.1 browser benchmark over the course of three months.

Details of the performance improvements

Google has made a range of tweaks to improve Chrome’s performance, including better memory management and improved caching. In a blog post, Google explained the optimizations it made to achieve the new milestone. Google identified specific optimizations for frequently used functions such as “Object.prototype.toString” and “Array.prototype.join” in JavaScript. Furthermore, it made targeted enhancements in InterpolableColor, which is a component of CSS. Additionally, Google recognized that updating the DOM through JavaScript’s “innerHTML” method is a common practice and thus introduced specialized fast paths for parsing.

Google also implemented pointer compression improvements, which led to better memory management strategies. This change particularly impacts frequently performed operations, leading to an overall performance boost. The post additionally discusses how frequently accessed objects, such as JavaScript’s “undefined,” are relocated to the start of the memory bases, where faster machine code can access them.

Impact on Chrome’s market share

Despite complaints about Chrome’s sluggishness in the past, Google’s browser continues to dominate the web browser market share. As of March 2023, Chrome is pulling in 64.8% of global market share, with Safari coming in at just 19.5% across all platforms.

Benefit to other browsers

Google’s enhancements are not exclusive to Chrome users, as one of the changes will also benefit WebKit, the browser engine used in Apple’s Safari. This means that a broader range of web browser users may experience improvements as a result of these changes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Google’s Chrome web browser has received a significant speed boost with under-the-hood performance improvements. The range of tweaks, from better memory management to improved caching, has led to a 10% increase on Apple’s Speedometer 2.1 browser benchmark. Despite complaints about Chrome’s sluggishness in the past, it continues to dominate the web browser market share. The improvements made by Google will also benefit other browsers, such as Safari, that use the WebKit engine.