Epic: #15
Block: 8 — How Browsers Work: Architecture to Pixels
Series order: 14 of 18
Description
Chrome's multi-process architecture — why each tab is isolated in its own sandboxed renderer process, what the other processes do, and why this design makes the browser both safer and more resilient.
Key topics
- Chrome's four main process types: browser process, renderer process, GPU process, network process
- Browser process: the orchestrator — UI, tabs, storage, network (via the network process)
- Renderer process: one per site origin (Site Isolation) — runs the tab's JavaScript, layout, painting
- Why sandboxing matters: a compromised renderer can't access the OS or other tabs
- GPU process: compositing and rasterisation off the main thread
- The main thread vs the compositor thread inside the renderer
- Process-per-site-instance vs process-per-tab: how Chrome decides when to share or isolate
- Why tab crashes are isolated: one renderer crashing doesn't take down the browser
Epic: #15
Block: 8 — How Browsers Work: Architecture to Pixels
Series order: 14 of 18
Description
Chrome's multi-process architecture — why each tab is isolated in its own sandboxed renderer process, what the other processes do, and why this design makes the browser both safer and more resilient.
Key topics