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Google issues statement about Chrome crashes on 2012 Macbooks

S

Stetrain

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 6, 2009
3,550
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We have identified a leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser related to the drawing of plugins on Mac OS X. Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause of the leak.

The resource leak is causing a kernel panic on Mac hardware containing the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip (e.g. the new Macbook Airs). Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.

While the root cause of the leak is being fixed, we are temporarily disabling some of Chrome's GPU acceleration features on the affected hardware via an auto-updated release that went out this afternoon (Thursday June 28). We anticipate further fixes in the coming days which will re-enable many or all of these features on this hardware.
Click to expand...

http://gizmodo.com/5921609/new-macbook-air-crashing-blame-google-chrome-probably


So it seems like a combination of a bug in Chrome and a bug in Apple's HD4000 driver, since a bug in Chrome shouldn't be able to make the driver cause a kernel panic.
 
I do appreciate these giant rivals working working together to fix a problem, at least when its in each of their own best interests.
 
It's bad for business to not work together on things like this, support of each others things is what they make a living of for the most part.

Same reason why google chrome browser is now available in the iphone app store :)
 
Well they are competing against safari so obviously it's in there best interest to support and fix things quickly lol:apple:
 
thomaskc said:
It's bad for business to not work together on things like this, support of each others things is what they make a living of for the most part.

Same reason why google chrome browser is now available in the iphone app store :)
Click to expand...

Apple had to do a bit of fixing as well.

But all too often you'll see companies cut off their nose to spite their face. With public companies, the requirement that everything they do be in their stockholders best interest is taken very liberally.

Apple could have said "If we ignore the problem, Google will lose $15 million and we'll only lose $7.5 million", instead of thinking "If we fix this, we don't lose any money, who cares how much google is losing". I'm greatful that companies are going for profits instead of company wars right now.
 
Anyone have scrolling issues with chrome using the trackpad? It seems to get stuck when trying to scroll up or down. Using early 2011 MBP.
 
It's shocking that this can still happen in 2012. I'm sure than either updated drivers for OS X and/or a Chrome update will fix this specific instance, but hopefully Mountain Lion fixes the underlying problem.

It hasn't been possible for a graphics driver crash to take down Windows anymore since the release of Vista in 2006 and the introduction of WDDM.

If the graphics driver crashes, it simply restarts the graphics stack rather than bluescreening (equivalent of a kernel panic) and taking down the entire OS with it.
 
Well, GPU drivers are complicated, bugs happen. Still, this one is a rather extreme one. Clearly not google's fault. Even if there is a bug in chrome (which I doubt, as it happily runs on every other GPU) a bug in user-space software should never cause a kernel panic.
 
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