• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

Electrolysis functionality hosts, renders, or executes web related content in background child processes which communicate with the "parent" Firefox browser via various ipdl protocols. The two major advantages of this model are security and performance. Security improvements are accomplished through security sandboxing, performance improvements are born out of the fact that multiple processes better leverage available client computing power.

Electrolysis child processes are currently in use for the following tasks within Firefox:

   Legacy NPAPI plugin hosting
   Media playback ('Gecko Media Plugin', a.k.a. 'GMP')
   Web content ('content processes')
   [Fx53] GPU Process (Windows Only) bug 1264543
   [Fx54] file://URL access process bug 1147911
   [Fx55] Web Extensions bug 1190679
   [Fx55, Fx56] ServiceWorker and in the future SharedWorker threads bug 1231208

Moses said

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

Electrolysis functionality hosts, renders, or executes web related content in background child processes which communicate with the "parent" Firefox browser via various ipdl protocols. The two major advantages of this model are security and performance. Security improvements are accomplished through security sandboxing, performance improvements are born out of the fact that multiple processes better leverage available client computing power. Electrolysis child processes are currently in use for the following tasks within Firefox: Legacy NPAPI plugin hosting Media playback ('Gecko Media Plugin', a.k.a. 'GMP') Web content ('content processes') [Fx53] GPU Process (Windows Only) bug 1264543 [Fx54] file://URL access process bug 1147911 [Fx55] Web Extensions bug 1190679 [Fx55, Fx56] ServiceWorker and in the future SharedWorker threads bug 1231208

Umm.. I'm so sorry.. But, could you make the answer simpler..? I tried to open link you provide, and doesn't understand at all. Sad.

In layman's terms, Firefox runs a different process for some things in order to be more stable.

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis/Multiple_content_processes

• v57 by default has 4 processes devoted to content
• Plugin container for Flash
• Gecko Media Player (GMP)
• GPU compositor which offloads heavy data to the GPU e.g. streaming
  • https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/the-whole-web-at-maximum-fps-how-webrender-gets-rid-of-jank/

Thank you very much for the answer. Problem solved.

Is there anything I can change in the settings to override this? It uses a WHOLE lot of memory and the machine crashes.