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A comment on Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from Firefox. Parent comment

Re:Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from... by taeric on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:18PM (#8351457)
Right, and the counter point is that this should not help there. If the other tabs are idle, than they are idle whether in process or not. If they are all cpu bound doing stuff, then your machine is again in trouble, current process or not. If they are all constantly thrashing in resources, you are still in trouble.

Why would you think the current monolithic would page out a tab that was actively being used? Why would this not also happen in the "per process" approach?

That is, how would this specifically help? If you are actively using the memory for the current tab, because it is the current tab, why would it be swapped out under the monolithic case where it would not in the per process case?

I'm perfectly willing to accept there is a scenario I am not considering. I just don't see it, right off.

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Re:Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from... by lern_too_spel on Monday September 22, 2014 @04:10PM (#8352337)
Because the tab you're using has barfed its data all over the heap, so you can't keep all its data paged into main memory. Its data is mixed together with the other tabs' data.
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Re:Electrolysis – run web content in a separate process from... by taeric on Monday September 22, 2014 @04:42PM (#8352519)
At face value, I don't see why this should necessarily be the case. That is, why would a tab "barf its data all over the heap?" More directly, why couldn't, as the sibling said, this have been addressed with a different allocation mechanism.

I'm assuming this has come up a fair bit. Any good links to read up on this?

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