Most modern operating systems now natively support 64-bit
processors, but even though many developers now offer 64-bit versions of
their applications, browsers have generally lacked behind this move (though there are a number of
unofficial 64-bit versions of Firefox, for example). Google, however, is releasing its first 64-bit version of Chrome today
into the highly experimental Developer and Canary channels
for Windows, which puts it on the road to a potential mainstream release later
this year. It’s unclear when Google will release this 64-bit version
for the Mac.
For the longest time, whenever somebody brought up the
question of where the 64-bit versions of most browsers were, people would
answer that there isn’t a real advantage to this change anyway. Google,
however, clearly answers this charge with today’s release. Google engineer Will
Harris today explains that this change brings a significant speed
improvement with it, for example.
“64-bit allows us to take advantage of the latest processor
and compiler optimizations, a more modern instruction set, and a calling
convention that allows more function parameters to be passed quickly by
registers,” Harris writes. “As a result, speed is improved, especially in
graphics and multimedia content, where we see an average 25% improvement in
performance.”
Google also argues that its tests have shown that the 64-bit
version of Chrome has been far more crash-resistant than its 32-bit
counterpart. Specifically, the renderer process now only crashes half as
often as before, according to Google’s own data.
Security also benefits from a 64-bit
implementation. 64-bit apps can take advantage of built-in security features
like High Entropy ASLR – a way to prevent exploits by putting key data areas of a
program into random parts of the computer’s memory so attackers can never know
exactly where to find it — on Windows 8, for example.
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