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Information about your favorite browser: news, articles and more.
Microsoft IE8 and Google Chrome - Processes are the New Threads
Published September 15th, 2008 in Browser Security, Google, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8
I happened to install Google Chrome (Alpha) the same day I installed Internet Explorer 8 (Beta). I noticed immediately, as I’m sure many of you have, that both browsers isolate tabs in different processes. Unix folks have known about the flexibility of forking a process forever. In Unix, fork() is just about the easiest thing you can do.
Also, fork()ing in Unix will copy the whole process and all variables into a new space. Everything after the fork happens twice. Multitasking made easy. In Windows, you call CreateProcess() and you don’t get a copy or clone. You just start up a whole new universe, starting from the very beginning - NOT from the call to CreateProcess(). What processes in Windows and Unix do have in common is that they each get their own protected virtual memory space. They are all alone and isolated. If a process crashes it’s less of a crisis than if a thread within a process crashes. Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - Microsoft IE8 and Google Chrome - Processes are the New Threads
