Architectural similarities and differences between Gazelle and Chrome

In my last post about Gazelle, the multi-principle browser OS from Microsoft, I talked about the basic need behind coming up with an multi-principle browser. A browser with the capability to execute JavaScript faster is what the real world web application’s, like Gmail or Facebook’s requirement is. Gazelle is aiming to provide a faster and secure execution environment for each web application, by putting each web application in it’s own principle.

Similarities of Gazelle with Chrome:

Have a look at the below architectural diagram of Gazelle browser.

– Image Credit : Microsoft Research Paper–

From the above diagram, we can see that what Gazelle trying to do is what Chrome already did. Well, this statement is not completely true, as Gazelle handles the independent processes differently than Chrome. We will see it later.

Coming to the Gazelle Architecture, as it is evident that instead of running all web site processes in single browser process, now Gazelle separates everything in it’s own process. The browser kernel will manage all other principals, thus acting as a co-ordinator here. All principals will use browser kernel’s system calls in order to interact with system resources. The browser kernel, in turn, will call operating system and delegate the events.

Differences between Gazelle and Chrome:

Even though Gazelle shares the similar architecture with Chrome, it differs mainly in how the sites are puts into different processes or principals in Gazelle’s word.

1. Gazelle considers abc.nowhere.com and xyz.nowhere.com as two different principals, where as Chrome puts them in single process as they belong to same domain.
2. If site nowhere.com embeds another site somewhere.com (in an IFrame), Gazelle puts them in two different principals, but Chrome puts them in single process.

If you want to read more about this, please have a look at this article which explains how Gazelle differs from Chrome.

Since Gazelle is in it’s starting stage, there could be many more architectural changes in the actual product when it is released. But, it is sure that the final architecture will resemble something to the above one.

Google has already switched to multi-process browser with Chrome (and it’s even building an OS based on Chrome). Now Microsoft is started to develop something on the similar line with Chrome. What about the folks at Mozilla and Opera !? Are they listening !?