1) Chrome with no ad blocking extension renders the page in about 112MB with fast scrolling.
2) Chrome with ad blocking extension installed inflates memory.
Seems pretty clear to me where the problem lies.
Also, the issue isn't about these extensions running in their own process as this is simply to prevent a bad extension from taking down the tab. It's about what these extensions are doing to the tab process.
My point has always been that uBlock is doing something to the Chrome tab process renderer that's causing it to consume a lot of memory. The very fact that the example page renders in only 112MB compared to >800MB with an ad blocker installed is proof of this. In the case of Chrome, with an ad blocker installed, they seem to be doing something to the DOM that causes the memory allocated for that renderer to balloon above 1GB. But, the very fact that these ad blockers cause this extreme spike in memory is alarming.
To the layman you would think the removal of ads from the DOM would reduce the amount of RAM consumed. But, just the opposite occurs. Why is this? What are these ad blockers doing exactly and why are they causing these rendering engines to spike in memory usage? But, one thing is clear, whatever they're doing it's the fault of the ad blocker and not Chrome.
Again. Please re-read the original article. Firefox is fixing their inefficient memory management w.r.t. CSS with a later version. That fixed version reduces the memory usage to 450Mb with the same Adblock code. So it wasn't exactly Adblock's fault - it was Mozilla's code that was grossly inefficient and they owned it and fixed it.
Same way, as it stands today, with uBlock FF 38.x loads that site in about 750Mb whereas Chrome with uBlock uses 1.6GB.
Unless you happen to know that uBlock is doing something crazy on Chrome but not on FF, and that Chrome code is 100% without inefficiencies - don't state it like a fact that it is uBlock that is the issue. uBlock is manipulating the DOM - Chrome is using memory for those elements, it is entirely up to them to optimize it if uBlock can work fine with less memory on Firefox while essentially doing the same thing.
Chrome isn't exactly known for being thrifty on memory and battery btw.
1) Chrome with no ad blocking extension renders the page in about 112MB with fast scrolling.
2) Chrome with ad blocking extension installed inflates memory.
Seems pretty clear to me where the problem lies.
Also, the issue isn't about these extensions running in their own process as this is simply to prevent a bad extension from taking down the tab. It's about what these extensions are doing to the tab process.