High CPU usage by the Google Chrome browser on an OS X system

When I started using a MacBook Pro laptop running OS X Yosemite (10.10.5) today, I found that the Google Chrome browser (version 35.0.1916.153) was slow to respond when I attempted to access web pages. When I checked the system CPU usage from a Terminal tab using the top command, I found a Google Chrome process with process identififer (PID) 29634 was consuming about 90% of the CPU cycles.

$ top -o cpu

Processes: 318 total, 7 running, 11 stuck, 300 sleeping, 2181 threads  10:57:11
Load Avg: 3.82, 6.20, 6.94  CPU usage: 35.23% user, 5.81% sys, 58.95% idle
SharedLibs: 16M resident, 10M data, 0B linkedit.
MemRegions: 187449 total, 7337M resident, 52M private, 1115M shared.
PhysMem: 16G used (2532M wired), 19M unused.
VM: 703G vsize, 1063M framework vsize, 11083768(0) swapins, 16907853(0) swapouts
Networks: packets: 17956740/12G in, 13426851/3518M out.
Disks: 13779844/398G read, 14840307/588G written.

PID    COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH    #WQ  #PORT MEM    PURG   CMPRS  PGRP
29634- Google Chrom 89.2 23:16:01 13     0    85    817M+  0B     638M-  515
28991- Google Chrom 30.7 23:37:36 10/1   0    78    124M+  0B     344M-  515
0      kernel_task  20.6 32:32:35 104/10 0    2     1685M+ 0B     0B     0
30147- Google Chrom 14.7 18:55:10 10     0    78    47M+   0B     87M    515
609-   Google Chrom 12.9 13:55:01 4/1    0    93    153M+  0B     859M-  515
75040- Google Chrom 12.7 09:26:48 19     0    89    100M+  0B     523M-  515
46990- Google Chrom 12.4 16:15:41 10     0    78    53M+   0B     194M-  515
55854- Google Chrom 11.1 12:09:27 10     0    78    42M    0B     100M   515
79850- Google Chrom 11.0 02:49:58 10     0    78    44M    0B     91M    515
55744- Google Chrom 10.5 12:19:13 20     0    92    31M+   0B     148M-  515
79625- Google Chrom 10.2 06:55:52 11     0    82    95M+   0B     442M-  515
83785- Google Chrom 9.1  04:23:07 10/1   0    78    35M+   0B     135M-  515
84883- Google Chrom 9.1  04:30:16 10/1   0    78    36M-   0B     71M-   515
190    WindowServer 8.8  14:29:00 5      1    1590- 44M-   8952K  628M   190
60247- Google Chrom 8.0  05:43:24 11/1   0    81    91M+   0B     247M-  515

You can determine what web pages a Google Chrome process has open by putting chrome://memory in the Chrome address bar. Once you've identified the relevant Chrome window/tabs associated with a process, you can close the tab, or tabs, that may be associated with the process to reduce CPU usage. If needed, you can also suspend a process temporarily under OS X with the kill command.

If you only wanted to see the CPU usage for one particular Chrome process, you can specify it with the -pid option to the top command. E.g., suppose chrome://memory-redirect, which is what will appear in the browser address bar if you place chrome://memory there after you hit Enter, was showing the following information for one Chrome process:

Aiseesoft DVD Creator for Mac
PIDNameMemory
  Resident
SharedPrivateVirtual

75040Tab
Classical Music Streaming
Finding the proxy setting for Firefox from a command line
128,996k N/Ak N/Ak 2,211,888k

I could view the fluctuating CPU usage by that particular process with a PID of 75040 with top -pid 75040

$ top -pid 75040

Processes: 312 total, 2 running, 9 stuck, 301 sleeping, 2183 threads   20:46:23
Load Avg: 6.23, 6.18, 6.49  CPU usage: 15.79% user, 6.76% sys, 77.43% idle
SharedLibs: 16M resident, 10M data, 0B linkedit.
MemRegions: 177931 total, 6940M resident, 65M private, 1133M shared.
PhysMem: 16G used (2509M wired), 20M unused.
VM: 697G vsize, 1063M framework vsize, 13836973(0) swapins, 19593135(0) swapouts
Networks: packets: 18081065/12G in, 13527483/3546M out.
Disks: 14075128/414G read, 15118478/605G written.

PID    COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH  #WQ  #POR MEM  PURG CMPRS PGRP PPID
75040- Google Chrom 8.3  09:53:20 19   0    89   75M+ 0B   499M- 515  515

You can also view CPU usage by Chrome using the Chrome Task Manager, which is available by clcking on Window at the top of a Chrome window and then selecting Task Manager. You can order the processes in order of CPU usage by clicking on the CPU column header.

Google Chrome Task Manager

If you click on the "Stats for nerds" link, you will see at the bottom of the Task Manager window, a tab will be opened for chrome://memory-redirect/, i.e., the same display you will see if you put chrome://memory in the address bar of a tab.

 

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