I just came back from a short vacation, and between iOS, Android, and Chrome, there is a lot of news that I missed. Google updated Chrome on multiple channels, including two dev channel updates for Chrome OS. I am getting started with updating the blog with all the latest, and then Google dropped another big news, 64-Bit version of Chrome with two brand new 64-bit Dev and Canary channels for Windows 7 and 8.

Lots of work to do! But for now, let us focus on the announcement. Here is Google’s version of why 64-bit:

• Speed: 64-bit allows us to take advantage of the latest processor and compiler optimizations, a more modern instruction set, and a calling convention that allows more function parameters to be passed quickly by registers. As a result, speed is improved, especially in graphics and multimedia content, where we see an average 25% improvement in performance.
• Security: With Chrome able to take advantage of the latest OS features such as High Entropy ASLR on Windows 8, security is improved on 64-bit platforms as well. Those extra bits also help us better defend against exploitation techniques such as JIT spraying and improve the effectiveness of our existing security defense features like heap partitioning.
• Stability: Finally, we’ve observed a marked increase in stability for 64-bit Chrome over 32-bit Chrome. In particular, crash rates for the renderer process (i.e. web content process) are almost half that of 32-bit Chrome.

Downloading and Installing 64-Bit Chrome

When you visit the Chrome and Chrome Canary download pages from a Windows computer, you will be asked to choose the bit version, 32 or 64, and after that, it is your regular Chrome download and install steps.