The company says the latest version of Chrome includes several tweaks under the hood that have resulted in a significant speed boost, particularly on Mac and Android devices.
These improvements resulted in a 10% increase in the browser benchmark Speedometer 2.1 over a three-month period.
The optimizations made to Chrome include various changes such as better caching and better memory management. Google has identified specific areas that need improvement, such as: B. JavaScript functions as well as the CSS InterpolableColor function. The company also introduced specialized fastpaths to parse innerHTML, a common method of updating the document object model (DOM) via JavaScript.
Optimization with Apple’s WebKit
In addition to these optimizations, Google has implemented more efficient pointer compression and improved memory management techniques. These changes affect commonly performed operations and result in an overall performance improvement. Objects that are accessed frequently, such as B. JavaScript’s “undefined” have also been moved to the beginning of the memory bases so that they can be accessed with faster machine code.
It should be noted that some of the optimizations made by Google also benefit WebKit, the browser engine developed by Apple and used in Safari. This means users of other browsers, not just Chrome users, can also benefit from the performance boost.
Faster on high-end Android mobile devices
Google also addressed the issue of performance on high-end Android mobile devices. Chrome on Android has been optimized for a small footprint, but the Android ecosystem is diverse, with devices of varying capabilities.
To maximize performance on high-end devices, Google created a version of Chrome with compiler flags geared towards speed rather than binary size. This version of Chrome is designed to run the Speedometer 2.1 test 30% faster on capable devices.
Global dominance of Chrome with 64% market share
Despite user complaints about Chrome’s historical slowness, the browser continues to dominate the web browser market, with over 64% market share worldwide according to Statcounter statistics as of March 2023. Chrome’s market share is followed by Safari, Edge and other browsers.