Chrome presentation/discussion summary

[James Chin]

Hey Everyone,

Yesterday, we discussed the paper entitled "Isolating Web Programs in
Modern Browser Architectures." Most web browsers today do not provide
sufficient isolation between concurrently executing programs. As a
result, competing programs within the browser encounter many types of
interference that affect their fault tolerance, memory management, and
performance. To address these issues, the authors faced three key
challenges: (1) finding a way for browsers to identify program
boundaries, (2) addressing the complications the arise when trying to
preserve compatibility with existing web content, and (3)
rearchitecting the browser to isolate separate programs. Their goal
was to improve browser robustness and performance by isolating web
instances, leaving security enhancements as a goal for future work.
The authors showed that divisions between web program instances can be
made without losing compatibility, although doing so requires
compromises. Ultimately, their evaluation showed that Google's
Chromium browser effectively implements such a multi-process
architecture.

However, based on our discussion, the evaluation section was found to
be rather incomplete, as the authors did not compare Chromium's
performance with other browsers (those with monolithic or multi-
process architectures). This section also favored theoretical
concepts over a more detailed technical discussion.

In any case, like my first presentation/discussion, I hope this one
was enriching for you in some way as well!

Thanks again,
James