Chrome "GPU Process" eats RAM even without a GPU present

[Coenraad Loubser]

Often on my Linux machines, if I disable hardware acceleration from the Chrome Menu, Chrome takes up around 100MB less RAM, and actually runs faster. 

How would I go about reporting this or even patching it myself? Can you point me to a link that details the "bootstrapping" process and where I should start looking to add some sort of detection, and to disable it by default if no GPU is present (if this should be done in the first place) - and also about the best etiquette and/or place to submit this patch for consideration in such a manner so as to give it a chance of being accepted?

Thanks

[Primiano Tucci]

Isn't just a matter of starting chrome with the --disable-gpu command line flag?

Why do you need any patch? Launching chrome without a GPU doesn't seem a major use case. and the cost of a command line flag does seem appropriate for a minor (yet perhaps legitimate) use case.

Or do you need more than just --disable-gpu ?

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[Primiano Tucci]

I think I still miss the use case here. Can you please clarify?

In which case, other than continuous-integration testing, running a browser on a headless machine is desirable or useful?

> The GPU team needs to realize that they need to disable themselves if there is no GPU.

Every change has a cost associated. it is likely that those people prefer spend their efforts changing code that has actual effects for real-world users, rather than optimizing for unlikely scenarios such as running a browser on a headless machine.

On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 9:53 PM Coenraad Loubser <coen...@wish.org.za> wrote:

Most users will just abandon Chrome because of it being slow. 

I'm an advanced user and have been on Firefox for the last few months, until I bothered to check. Most users won't - and Chrome should be smart enough to not waste resources on something that it will never use. The GPU team needs to realize that they need to disable themselves if there is no GPU.

[Sunny Sachanandani]

Can you paste the contents of chrome://gpu here?

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[Coenraad Loubser]

[Bill Dickerson]

Unlikely - with Google aiming their shots directly at businesses and government entities such as ourselves, they do indeed need to consider that business and government is running thousands and thousands of virtual desktops with limited resources. We find that when a browser, such as Chrome, locks resources like it does, it hammers equipment so hard it causes issues for all users. Our issues of late have been the large resources taken by the browser. When they aren't freed up on a host server, even if only 10 people are operating a browser, the 100 who are not suffer slow responses.

If Google wishes to continue to have their sights set on business and government, they need to make Chrome far more friendly to virtual environments, make installation from central systems such as SCCM and Altiris easier, and add some support for government IT staff.

Right now it's still sitting back at the individual home user stage, it's not fully ready for prime-time as far as medium business. I say medium as large business generally has the endless IT resources to spend days on issues, we do not.

3 Chrome tabs take as many resources as 10-12 Firefox tabs in my testing, and IE can run multiple browser instances with 10-15 tabs open and not hit processor and RAM so hard.

Google got its foot in the door by allowing employees of government and business to install their browser bypassing Microsoft app installation standards and policies. Now that they have that foothold, it's time to move the browser into a business direction or have a distinct version for us and leave the other to the home computer user who doesn't care.

Even the central IT guys in Iowa are struggling with this, it's really impacting the smaller state agencies.

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