Through a blog post, Microsoft has announced that they will be using disc caching in an attempt to “deliver the best performing browser possible on Windows and other platforms”, starting with Microsoft Edge 102.
Disc caching is a technique used to speed up the process of storing and accessing data from the host hard disk and at the same time reduce the disk footprint. At some point, you might have had a browser experience that is less than pleasing, which could be an indication that your browser is making use of too many resources that in return causes it to slow down.
Microsoft has further indicated that they have carefully looked into the management of the size of the cache especially when it comes to devices that may not have sufficient disk space. Disc caching may cause the user to run out of disk space, but browsers make use of this technique using the available space.
As a an alternative, Microsoft has turned to compressing files instead, which does not require a lot of disk space. Based on the fact that “these cache(s) are often highly compressible, compression results in increasing the likelihood that the requested resource can be fetched from the disk”.
According to the blog post, “Beginning with Microsoft Edge 102 on Windows, Microsoft Edge automatically compresses disk caches on devices that meet eligibility checks, to ensure the compression will be beneficial without degrading performance. This ensures compression of these caches largely improves performance and overall user experience”.
In other Edge news, be sure to also check out our report where we highlight the tweaks and fixes that made it to the latest Microsoft Edge Dev release. Also, let us know what you think about disc caching coming to Microsoft Edge in the comment section.
