One of the great problems that widely used programs such as browsers present us is the high consumption of resources that they usually produce. This is something that, as surely many of you will already know first-hand, it is extended to Google Chrome .
Of course, all this affects both the performance of the program itself, as well as that of other running applications. That is why we tell you that at the moment Google is experimenting with an increase in the storage of the browser cache. What you really want to do is reduce the performance drop caused by the recently added partitioned cache feature.
And is that before Chrome 85 the browser used a single storage space to save cache resources. This includes elements such as images, audio, video, or HTML content from previously visited pages. Thus, when Chrome opens a website it checks if the requested resources are stored in the cache, if so, it loads them from it instead of downloading them from the remote server. But using a single shared storage space for all stored resources could lead to a series of attacks related to malicious activities.
Google will increase Chrome’s cache to improve its performance
Therefore, to avoid these attacks Google added a new function to Chrome 85 that partitions the browser’s cache , as we told you a few days ago. So each website uses its own cache that cannot be read by other pages. However, this partitioning of the cache decreases the performance of the program. And is that when Google tested this new feature, they saw that it caused a small impact on performance, although they compensated with an increase in security.
As verified, the performance of the split cache decreases the performance of the program by about 4%. But it is still a step back in the general operation of Chrome, something that also wants to be solved. Thus, in order to improve that performance that we are commenting on while maintaining security, Google is now testing another functionality. In particular, we are not referring to the fact that the search giant is experimenting with an increase in the size of the disk cache. All this to prevent stored objects from disappearing from the cache too quickly over time.
So what Google intends at the moment is to experiment with different cache sizes now that it is partitioned. In fact that makes more sense to see if increasing the cache size helps offset the performance hit. The reason for all this is that this movement reduces the erasure rate of saved items . As part of the test, the performance of the browser will be measured with different disk cache sizes.
These are the tests with the Chrome cache
With this we want to see if increasing the amount of storage for this element translates positively into the performance of the software . Throughout all of this Google plans to test caching at 2, 2.5, and 3 times the normal cache size.
Saying that Google itself hopes that increasing the size of the cache will reduce the number of times the browser has to delete the oldest saved items. This increased storage would increase the number of cached objects simultaneously and improve browsing performance.