Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time - uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues GitHub Wiki

This page is just a place for me to keep track of contributed memory to web pages over time. I consider the contributed memory to web pages to be more important than the own memory footprint. Unfortunately, a user can not see how much memory overhead an extension contributes to a web page without running a benchmark like the one here. Keep in mind the results here are only for one basic web page.

Using Acid Test 3, a simple web page with embedded iframes, the web page opened in a new tab for each extension after a browser restart.

Each extension was tested alone, with no other extensions enabled. Leaving the browser idle for more than 1 minute ensured that the web page memory was garbage collected.

Added the following steps for benchmarks dated December 2014 and later:

  1. Click "Stats for nerds" in "Task Manager": "About memory" opens.
  2. Wait a few seconds.
  3. Close the "About memory" tab.
  4. Wait a few seconds.
  5. Repeat all the above steps until the memory footprint of the Acid Test tab stops decreasing.

I found that this was now necessary as it appears the Chromium garbage collector has become rather lazy. The above steps force it into action.

24 December 2014

  • Chromium 39.0.2171.65 64-bit (Linux)
  • uBlock Origin (uBO) 0.8.2.2 (default lists: EasyList, Peter Lowe’s Ad server, EasyPrivacy, malware domain lists, Fanboy’s Social Blocking List‎)
  • Adblock Plus (ABP) 1.8.8 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)

Summary of results:

  • Reference memory usage for the web page: 23 MB
  • uBO adds over 10 MB
  • ABP adds over 33 MB
  • ABP with the same filter lists as uBO adds over 46 MB

No extension (reference): no extension

uBO: uBlock

ABP: Adblock Plus

ABP with same filter lists as uBO: Adblock Plus

19 September 2014

  • Chromium 37.0.2062.94 64-bit (Linux)
  • uBO 0.6.2.1 (default filter lists)
  • ABP 1.8.5 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)

Summary of results:

  • Reference memory usage for the web page: 22 MB
  • uBO Plus adds over 9 MB
  • ABP adds over 32 MB

No extension (reference): no extension

uBO: uBlock

ABP: Adblock Plus

Observations:

The last time I ran this benchmark was on Chromium 34 64-bit, and it does appear that Chromium 37 is causing web pages to consume more memory. The reference result went from ~17 MB to ~22 MB.