I figured out why ChatGPT uses 3GB of RAM and lags so bad. Built a fix.
Analysis
This article, sourced from Reddit's OpenAI community, details a user's investigation into ChatGPT's performance issues on the web. The user identifies a memory leak caused by React's handling of conversation history, leading to excessive DOM nodes and high RAM usage. While the official web app struggles, the iOS app performs well due to its native Swift implementation and proper memory management. The user's solution involves building a lightweight client that directly interacts with OpenAI's API, bypassing the bloated React app and significantly reducing memory consumption. This highlights the importance of efficient memory management in web applications, especially when dealing with large amounts of data.
Key Takeaways
- •Web applications can suffer from memory leaks due to inefficient DOM management.
- •Native applications often have better memory management than web applications.
- •Lightweight clients can improve performance by directly interacting with APIs.
“React keeps all conversation state in the JavaScript heap. When you scroll, it creates new DOM nodes but never properly garbage collects the old state. Classic memory leak.”