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Dukeluke

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 31, 2013
20
0
In my activity monitor it appears that Google Chrome Helper (PID # 297, 161, 156, 154, 282, 152, 148 and few others) are taking up alot of real memory. My questions is why is there so many google chrome helper(s) active, and why is taking up so much CPU %.
 

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I see the same thing under Mavericks 10.9.1. It seems to be a known issue with Chrome from this discussion in the Google support forums.

I have six instances of helper with just Chrome running, then another instance spawns for each additional tab I open. I does not seem to hinder performance or anything though.
 
In my activity monitor it appears that Google Chrome Helper (PID # 297, 161, 156, 154, 282, 152, 148 and few others) are taking up alot of real memory. My questions is why is there so many google chrome helper(s) active, and why is taking up so much CPU %.

You probably have a bunch of tabs open. Those "helper" processes are handling whatever is going on in the tabs. Also for Flash.

You can see what it affects by killing the Chrome Helper processes one at a time then looking at your Chrome tabs. You'll an "oops" message and the tab will need to reload.

It was worse when it was all in one process, and another for Flash.


Michael
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi,

Tinmania is correct. Chrome creates separate processes for each tab so that if one tab crashes, the rest don't go down with it. And each process uses so much memory because Chrome is a memory hog.

Regards
Raptor
 
Hi,

Tinmania is correct. Chrome creates separate processes for each tab so that if one tab crashes, the rest don't go down with it. And each process uses so much memory because Chrome is a memory hog.

Regards
Raptor

This is not just from tabs. Read my post above. If you open Chrome with no tabs at all open it will span six of those processes.

Here is Chrome with just the main window open from a cold launch and no extra tabs. There is no Flash or anything running either that might spawn another process.

It does not seem to cause any problems, but it is odd behavior.

oeupFcv.png
 
This is not just from tabs. Read my post above. If you open Chrome with no tabs at all open it will span six of those processes.

Here is Chrome with just the main window open from a cold launch and no extra tabs. There is no Flash or anything running either that might spawn another process.

It does not seem to cause any problems, but it is odd behavior.

Image

Forgive my haste. I rechecked and have the same 6 processes for just the application and 1 each for every tab. But then again, no harm done.

Raptor
 
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