How much memory is that?
Memory has grown by a factor of about ten million in fifty years, and browsers have absorbed most of it.
2 × an entry laptop
16 GB is bigger than 5 of the 7 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo Guidance Computer | 4.1×10⁻⁶ GB | 3,906,250× | 4 kB of RAM |
| Commodore 64 | 6.4×10⁻⁵ GB | 250,000× | |
| first iPhone | 0.128 GB | 125× | |
| a browser tab | 0.3 GB | 53.3× | |
| an entry laptop | 8 GB | 2× | |
| a developer laptop | 32 GB | 0.5× | |
| a database server | 512 GB | 1/32 |
Worth knowing
- The Apollo Guidance Computer flew to the Moon with 4 kB of RAM. A single modern browser tab uses about 75 000 times that.
- The Commodore 64’s entire memory would not hold one paragraph of a modern web page’s JavaScript.
Frequently asked
How much RAM do I need?
8 GB is workable for browsing and office work, 16 GB is comfortable, and 32 GB matters mainly for virtual machines, video editing and large datasets.
Why does a browser use so much memory?
Because each tab runs in its own process for security, with its own JavaScript engine and rendering. That isolation is worth the cost, but it is not free.