Microsoft has been working hard to ensure that its new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser can run as optimally as possible. Back in June, Microsoft had released a blog post detailing how the new technology was "showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge."
This revolved around the May 2020 update, and even Chrome intended to implement this technology to greatly reduce memory usage. Chrome is notorious for being a memory eater, so this could've been hugely beneficial for the browser.
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However, after a handful of tests, both Microsoft and Google have concluded that it's not worth implementing (via PCWorld). Although this technology would greatly help memory usage, it reportedly increased the processing power required to use the browsers.
Bruce Dawson, a Chromium contributor, noted that "the CPU cost (10% slowdown on speedometer 2.0, 13% increase in CPU/power consumption) is too great for us too keep." As a result, the plan is to disable this feature and "reconsider in the future."
However, there has been some controversy within the forum. One user replied claiming "the vast majority of PC users are not going to notice the CPU cost, but are being impacted in overall system performance because of the memory requirements of Chrome."
Bruce Dawson replied that they're taking this decision "very seriously" and are worried that "the increased CPU cost is enough that it will harm battery life." For now, however, Google and Microsoft will gather further data and believe the feature won't be postponed for long.
