I'm perfectly willing to wait a second for the page to be reloaded from solid-state storage, if I haven't visited the page for an hour or more.

Some people might say I shouldn't keep hundreds of tabs open for weeks. But I'm an old guy, and by my standards my laptop is a freakin supercomputer, so in my mind it should be able to handle all the web pages I can manually throw at it.

As a person who also has way too manu tabs open at all times, I've had success with the great suspender [0]. It "suspends" pages after a timeout so they use less memory.

[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

The current version also has a bug where it will create so many cookies on google-owned domains that it will exceed the header limit and cause a 500 response. The dev refuses to fix it until he implements a feature to make suspended tabs persist across updates, which is apparently slow going.

Well, it is opensource so anyone can fix it for fun or profit: https://github.com/deanoemcke/thegreatsuspender

Seconded. I reliably have a few hundred tabs open, and GS keeps them all manageable.

It’s not always happy if Chrome crashes or I have to do a cold reboot, but mostly it keeps Chrome’s gluttony under control.

At this point why not just use something like OneTab? It also syncs the tabs across many computers.

Well chrome will "suspend" tabs when it sees your system is running low on memory, and will resume them when you switch to them.

But it's a much harder problem to solve than many think. For example, if they start "suspending" my slack tab, or my email tab, and I begin missing messages I'm going to be quite upset...

That doesn't sound like a reason for it to be hard - just provide a way to mark tabs as "don't suspend". I have only a couple I would put in that category, and I really wish Chrome would stop burning up all my resources and battery on the rest (often it's not a specific tab, just the "Browser" process, so I can't do it manually).

I'm pretty sure the amount of users that actually like this opt-out behaviour (everything gets suspended by default) is a minority.

Instead what they choose to do is not worry about memory until it you actually run out of it. I don't mind my applications taking up 90% of my memory if that keeps everything fast and I don't have to worry about keeping track and thinking about what I actually want to suspend and what I dont't.

If you really do mind, just run any of the plugins that implements your exact required behaviour (like the great suspender).

Next step: Limit the amount of memory available to Chrome so it thinks your system is running low on memory earlier.

> I'm going to be quite upset...

You'll get over it, I promise.

I'd just end up using another browser that doesn't purposely slow itself down or make me miss notifications or stop background activity unnecessarily.

Why the extreme majority would want that from their browser all the time baffles me. Just to see a lower number in a resource monitor window?

Firefox keeps alive pinned tabs, don't know about chrome

If one tab uses about 100MB of memory then does two hundred tabs use 20GB of RAM?

You say you sometimes have "hundreds" of tabs open, I've done this too, but my laptop doesn't have 20GB of RAM, but it just seems to work anyway.

What I ended up doing was: just stop looking at resource monitors.

I don't know but it eventually bogs down the computer. Fan starts running hard and everything's slow until I close down a bunch of tabs.

> I'm perfectly willing to wait a second

I'm not. I open dozens of pages simultaneously routinely. 1 second here, one second there, it adds up.

Sure, it's not the end of the world, but those differences were why Chrome was better than Firefox.

You cut off the "if I haven't touched the tab in an hour" part.

How many times does that pretty-narrow situation happen to you in a day?

If you had such a memory-saving mechanism, boosted by prefetching the tabs adjacent to my current tab, it would barely cost me any seconds in an average week. Running low on memory is a big hassle taking a lot of seconds to deal with.

That one second makes me want to smash my device to pieces.

And stop being quite so snarky to users who may not know about these hidden settings.

Another implied solution perhaps... don't use so many tabs? (I promise you, I'm speaking to myself as I say that. I use way too many, myself)

I'm currently at 30 Firefox tabs and it's using 1.24gb of memory. Much less than 100mb/tab.

Firefox recently switched to a design that tends towards a higher base memory usage than Chrome, but a lower usage for each new tab. With the same 30 tabs open and no extensions, the current Firefox uses ~30% less memory than Chrome. But opened only to one tab, Chrome uses ~60% less memory than Firefox. It's an interesting tradeoff.

1 is entirely possible. Opera 12.x takes ~3-10MB per TAB (+the weight of the media used on the page). There is zero latency, opening new/switching tabs is instantaneous.

Google devs use 16-32 core machines, often with hundreds of gigabytes ram. Why would they bother optimizing?

FWIW, I'm a Google dev and my only computer is the same 2015 15" MacBook Pro that many of the people reading this have had. Anecdotally, most of the developers I see are in the same boat (using a rMBP as their primary machine).

Many of the folks who work in our monorepo have an additional Linux workstation - not sure what the specs are on it, or what the average split is between laptop and workstation surfing. I also haven't paid that much attention to see if the folks I know on the Chrome team have substantially different usage.

>Google devs use 16-32 core machines, often with hundreds of gigabytes ram

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Most devs at Google use MacBook Pros.. which cannot even be upgraded to hold hundreds of gigs of ram.

The standard setup is a Linux desktop workstation - typically 6-8 core and 32-64gig ram depending on age (although there are some special set ups).

The required build tools and software for the internal engineering systems aren't usually available on a Mac so you'll need to have a Linux machine (physical or virtual) somewhere to remote into to do any dev work (again some teams are different but the bulk of engineers use the centralised Google infrastructure for source control, builds etc)

In addition to the desktop, every engineer gets a choice of laptop (Mac/windows/Chromebook) as well for email, meetings and cat videos.

Non-engineering just get a single laptop. Many many people now pick to use Chromebooks.

Chrome devs are given both a laptop (most choose a MacBook Pro) and a fairly beefy desktop. My one had 64G of RAM, and that was given to me six years ago.

Are those 64GB for browsing the web as parent poster claims, or for compiling software, leaving much less for web browsing?

Did you know that it remains free when you’re not compiling in a moment?

The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds... And for completeness, 6 physical cores, 12 logical with HT. Still beefy, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I would venture to say that most of the world isn't using computers with 32GB RAM...

I consider 2GB acceptable, 4GB normal, and 8GB high-end (maybe even overkill).

Strange, that's the metric I personally used around 2008. Haven't ran into a computer with less than 16GB for the last few years.

A rather popular hardware site in a developing country, but one on the upper range of "developing". So probably better off than 60% of the world's population:

399 laptops with 4GB of RAM: https://www.pcgarage.ro/notebook-laptop/filtre/memorie-capac...

548 laptops with 8GB of RAM: https://www.pcgarage.ro/notebook-laptop/filtre/memorie-capac...

Less than 200 laptops, in total, with 16GB RAM or more. So probably less than 20% of the laptops on sale have that much memory, in 2018.

The "real" world is quite different to what us folks in IT see in our corner of the world.

8GB is still a pretty common setup

* Literally every current MacBook except the 15" MBP

* iMacs unless you choose to upgrade the RAM

* My local PC retailers website has 34 models with 4GB of RAM, 84 with 8GB and 28 with 16GB. The cheapest 16gb laptop there is €1100. They also sell 3 Chromebooks and 1 windows 10 device with 2GB of RAM..

Especially since 32GB DDR4 RAM currently cost ~$350.

You are so wrong. Check here http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

these are gaming, most powerful PCs people are using. 8gb is 44% of all users.

I believe dgquintas is describing the standard engineering workstation at Google.

>most powerful PCs people are using

No, workstations and\or graphical stations are powerfull. Gaming rigs can be powerfull, but most of the time they are average or just above average.

Also - steam statistic will show you a great number of PCs that are being used only to play some indie games and\or Dota. 8gb is more than enough for that.

Depends on how you define "power". I'm sure devs often have more RAM for VMs etc, where gamers have more GPU for graphics. I'm building a gaming rig right now, the games I wanna play 8GB of RAM is plenty.

But if you click on the RAM section, 40% have 12gb or more.

yeah, sorry, I was referring specifically to the Google developer standard workstations.

Batch reply to the other comments: the "standard machine" here refers to what Google developers are using.

Are you talking standard Google developer workstation specs? That's not much different than the thinkservers we use as desktops. But considerably beefier than what non-desktop devs might be accustomed to.

Surely 16Gb was more common at least until recently? Haven’t seen many 32gb ram mbp in the wild. Actually, I’ve never seen one.

Apple doesn't even offer a 32GB option for their Macbook Pro computers. 32gb is far from standard.

Yes, they don't offer that on their laptops, but what the OP is talking about is a desktop machine. Apple definitely offers 32 GB in their desktops.

OP is talking about the machines Google devs use, and I am betting they are definitely not desktop machines.

He was describing the standard desktop workstation at Google.

My understanding is that they have rMBP laptops and slightly beefier desktops.

some people have macs, some other people have thinkpads (at other points in time, there have been dells or HPs as well). But only desktops are actually used for any development.

they are desktop machines.

320 = 3.2 hundreds not .32 hundreds. 3 hundreds, 2 tens, and 0 ones.

But, he said 32 GB, not 320, so it would be 0.32 hundreds.

Right. What do you get when you divide 32GB by 100MB per tab. It's not .32 hundreds. It is 3.2 hundreds.

> The standard machine has 32 GB. So I guess 0.32 hundreds

His comment was in response to Opera 12.x takes ~3-10MB per TAB (+the weight of the media used on the page).

>Why would they bother optimizing?

Because they're also targeting Android devices.

This incidentally is why I chose a OnePlus: for its 6Gb of RAM.

this is supposed to be exaggerated but who the fuck uses a 32 core computer with hundreds for gigabytes of ram. Do you mean their data centers?

The numbers might be slightly exaggerated. Nonetheless, they’re high-end machines.

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and...

My dev workstation at work has 20 Xeon cores w/ HT (so 40 threads), 64GB RAM and a 1TB NVME SSD. All that hardware sees plenty of use when compiling large C++ applications.

My home machine has 4 i7 cores w/ HT, 32GB RAM & a 1TB SSD. Compiling stuff on that one is ok, although quite a bit slower.

My desktop has 128 GB with 32 cores.

What CPU/mobo you using?

The one I mentioned is a precision w/ 2x2680. These dropped in price and flooded the market after leases finished. There are too many problems and finicky nonsense with adding extra video cards (due to the power supply). I also have an HP w/ 2x2680v2 128GB on the way. Using the HP I'll be able use for some projects a few of the old nanos and 295x2s I have sitting around. These are so cheap now.

Reminds me of this, https://medium.com/@timgasser/build-a-16-core-128gb-server-f... Looks like from supply and demand those prices increased a bit.

It's more expensive to build one than to buy one, which is why I said I bought some off lease. I've bought systems not (generally higher priced) parts that were scavenged or not sold.

I had misread that, thanks.

Do you have any model numbers or suggestions as to where to buy this sort of stuff? I want to get (always wanted really) a dev server for home.

Sure. You can start here. https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&D...

Most amazon employees now use ec2 instances as their development environment so using a x1e.32xlarge with 128 vCPU's (64 cores over 4 sockets), 3,904 GiB of memory, 2 x 1,920 NVMe GB drives, and 14,000 Mbps of EBS bandwidth is possible.

Granted, I don't know anyone that uses that much and you would probably get asked by management for using a dev desktop that big but you can if you need to. I myself use just a i3.xlarge with 4 vCPU's, 30.5 or memory, Up to 10 Gigabit of EBS storage and 1 x 0.95 NVMe SSD.