Why are there multiple Chrome instances running even though I only have one window (only one tab) open?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Multiple chrome.exe in Task Manager

In Windows Task Manager it seems that I have multiple Chrome processes running, even though I only have one Chrome window open.

How is this possible? I always thought each open program represented one process.

Solution 1

These separate processes are called SANDBOXING. This allows A process to crash, but keeps other processes from crashing a system (or Chrome)

Solution 2

You can see which process does what on:

Wrench Menu->View Background Pages

Which looks like this:

Solution 3

Don't forget to read the Chrome introduction comic that covers this among other design decisions:

Solution 4

Google Chrome use separate process for each tab. Using interprocess communication you can manage multiple processes as one application.

Using multiple process can help an applications to be more robust and better use system resources.

See:

• Post on the Chromium blog - for the reasons google use multiple process in Chrome.
• This stackoverflow answer - for a better detailed programmer wise explanation.
• The IPC value on Wikipedia - for more general description of inter-process communication.

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Comments

[jan deeg]

"More robust", definitely. "Better use system resources" -- not so sure about that. Doesn't the multiprocess model use a fair bit more memory?

[Admin]

if by "Better use system resources" you mean "way more resources" you are correct.

[Colonel Panic]

Alternatively, right-click on some empty space in the tab bar then select 'task manager' or for a static snapshot, browse to chrome://memory

[Hritika Agarwal]

Another alternative seems to be shift+escape key combination.