Multiprocessing Firefox

With newer, modern hardware systems, it is likely that they will contain either multiple physical processors or a single physical processor with multiple cores. When writing applications with these systems as the target platform, it is often a good idea to utilize more than a single process within the application. Why is it that multiple processes make sense within a single application? One may be inclined to think of the concept of a process as being designated for a single running application, or a one-to-one cardinality if you will. On top of moving away from the comfortable idea of a single process for a single application that so many developers are used to, there is also the messy problem of inter-process communication. This particular problem isn't quite as bad as it is made out to be. We just need to use the appropriate abstractions on top of the inter-process communication functionality. Going back to the question of why it is a good idea in the first place, the chief benefit of using multiple processes within a single application is the performance gains. While the same application concurrency logic implemented using threads will offer better responsiveness, the multiprocessing approach offers an opportunity for true concurrency on systems with multiple processors.

The Firefox web browser is currently implementing a version of the browser which incorporates multiple processes rather than having the entire application run in a single process. As discussed above, this entry provides some rationale behind why the development team decided to implement this functionality. Aside from the inherent performance gains offered by systems with multiple processors, there is increased stability. The stability is increased because independent processes decouple the entire browser architecture. This helps provide a degree of isolation not available in a single process. The stability gains are especially apparent when considering the multiple tabs used to view disparate web pages. Security could potentially be improved as a side effect of the isolation provided by processes. Finally, not mentioned in the entry but equally relevant in design terms, the distribution of responsibilities within the web browser system becomes very clear. It sometimes takes a drastic move to improve this design principle such as moving entire pieces of code to a separate process.

In this entry, a demonstration of the browser running a separate process for the tab content shows a clear stability improvement. Even after killing the content process, the user interface process remains in tact.