Google Chrome for Windows gets new optimizations

Fariha Khan
November 7, 2016
749

If you are a regular Google Chrome user, here is a great news for you. Google Chrome for windows now loads 15% faster. Thanks to its new optimizations that make the most of Microsoft’s Profile Guided Optimization (PGO). Previously this optimization technology was available for 64-bit Windows computers, but now as a part of Chrome 54, it is within the reach of all.

Having more than a million functions, Google Chrome is without doubt a wonderful software product. PGO tracks which code is commonly called on to guide optimization, with some used more often than others. With the update, the startup time is now 16.8% faster. The new tab page loads 14.8% faster than previous versions. Page load times see a 5.9% enhancement as well.

The optimization technology basically uses data from runtime execution. There is a special version of Google Chrome that tracks the frequency of some functions, with PGO optimizing high-use functions for speed by perking up the binary size. Functions which are not often used as put to the back end, which results in somewhat slower code. But, we get higher performance overall and a smaller general code footprint.

Likewise, by moving less used functions apart from those that are often used, memory location is optimized. The outcome is more optimal use of the CPU instruction cache by escaping caching of less-used code, improving performance on the whole.

The 64-bit Google Chrome for Windows version has been using PGO since version 53, but 32-bit Chrome has started using it now. You can download the latest version of Chrome from Google here.