Google has announced via its Chromium blog that Chrome will be noticeably faster thanks to the inclusion of Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) and Tab Throttling. The latest version of Chrome that's rolling out today will come with PGO, but users will have to wait on Tab Throttling.
Profile Guided Optimization was already introduced in Chrome 53 on Windows using Microsoft Visual C++, the previous build environment that Google was using. With Chrome 85 the feature is available on Mac and Windows using Clang, there’s no mention of Linux getting the feature, though.
Google’s testing shows that PGO speeds up page loads times by 10% but even bigger speed improvements occur when the CPU is busy with many tabs of programs. Windows users will see a slightly bigger jump in PGO-derived performance but Mac users will benefit too.
The other new feature is Tab Throttling; this will give tabs that you’re using more resources while taking them from background tabs that you haven’t touched for a long time. This feature brings speed, battery, and memory savings. It’s unclear exactly when tab throttling will be available for everyone but Google has switched it on for those using Chrome Beta.
