More evidence of the push towards multi-threaded applicationsThe Internet Explorer Blog has been updated with information regarding the tabbed browsing implementation in the upcoming IE7. There are a good many juicy details that the programmers and developers among us will find interesting, but this is what stood out by far, in my opinion:
Each tab is on a separate thread, and the frame is also on its own thread. This has some impact on the overall footprint of IE, but we believe this will allow IE7 to feel faster and provide an overall better user experience. Internally this creates some additional complexity as we have to deal with a lot of cross-thread communication, but it also gives us a way to do things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do with a single-threaded approach.
I was just discussing the lack of multi-threading in current main-stream applications in my Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and Pentium D 820 reviews. I speculated that we'd be seeing a push for multi-threading soon enough, due to the presence of dual-core chips on the market. Who would have known that the first one out the door with a major multi-threaded application would be Microsoft with Internet Explorer 7?
I've already stated before that if IE7 lives up to my expectations and does tabbed browsing well, I'll switch back to it in an instant. Firefox is bloated and slow, and it's not uncommon for it to take up to 90 MB of physical memory and 400 MB of virtual memory on my home system after I've had it running for a few days. Highly unacceptable. With my planned purchase of a dual-core Athlon 64 sooner or later, a multi-threaded IE7 will scream.
What is the Mozilla Foundation going to do in response to this? Will they trim/optimize Firefox's code? I'm tired of the lag I feel when quickly opening multiple tabs, even on an Athlon 64 @ 2.3 GHz with 2 GB of RAM.
Article Link: IE7 Tabbed Browsing Implementation
