Never had a problem with Chrome personally, though this does sound worrying. I see that Safari is bringing on-board a lot of Chrome's features, such as the omnibox so obviously Apple are fans of Chrome as well.
Glad to hear Google admit that there's a problem rather than ignoring it.
Actually Google are fans of Safari seeing as how that's what Chrome is based on as can be seen in the open source license agreements of Chrome and Android.
Try putting things the right way around the next time.
His statement is a blatant mistruth. One need only type "graphics blue screen of death" into any search engine for an absurd number of complaints about bug checks ("Blue Screen of Death") in Microsoft Windows caused by graphics drivers. In fact, his statement demonstrates a complete lack of understanding the issue.
Considering the features and performance of Google Chrome for iPhone versus Apple Safari for iPhone there is little to no point in using Google Chrome:
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Google Chrome for iPhone
1. 6829.8ms
2. 6836.6ms
3. 6834.7ms
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Apple Safari for iPhone
1. 1760.5ms
2. 1752.5ms
3. 1732.5ms
Apple Safari features that Google Chrome lacks; however, in all fairness Google may require one to login to Google for some features which I am not foolish enough to do:
No synchronized tabs
No synchronized bookmarks
No offline reading list
No ability to add to Home Screen
No Fraudulent website warnings
No Facebook integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Message integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Printing (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Twitter integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
Chrome was my default browser, but I gave up using it a few months ago because it was causing my 2009 MacBook Pro to freeze every couple of days or so (running current version of OS X). Now I've gone back to using Firefox it never freezes. I occasionally start Chrome just to see if there''s been a software update, because I dare not use it as it is.
Actually Google are fans of Safari seeing as how that's what Chrome is based on as can be seen in the open source license agreements of Chrome and Android.
Try putting things the right way around the next time.
Chrome isn't based on Safari, it's based on WebKit. WebKit is an Apple-developed open source rendering engine used by practically every web-browser apart from IE and Firefox.
I tend to agree. I tend to see a user-mode program making call down the OS X API stack causing a kernel panic as something... 'odd.'
Even Apple agrees: "Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior."
This is an Apple bug that was exercised Chrome.... not maybe they sent crap down through the call... but I would hope that OS X would have done some level of checking before pushing the crap to the graphics chip, and having it spit up a kernel vomit. Heck, I'm surprised they didn't grey list the flash code in some profiler prior to the critical call and quarantine it;-).
It is very possible to pass bad code at the level you are talking about (much closer to the silicon than other calls) if indeed they are trying to optimize the 4000. I can't see to much of and area where you could optimize code via user level calls.The API does allow for some stuff that you can hang yourself with if you are not fastidious in your resource/memory management. Very little else could do that other that a kext. A well written and thoroughly tested app should not see this.
There is not anything in the OS to keep poorly behaved code (badly written) from crashing an app. From what I read it simply crashed…
The moral of the story is stay away from third party browsers (and other Google and Adobe code -- they both have a track record of putting out good ideas without the best QA) until someone else has shaken it out.
All joking and google bashing aside, it's shocking how this can happen to os x in 2012, a gfx driver crash hasn't brought down windows since vista in what 2007? The graphics stack should simply restart without bringing down the whole os. There 's a problem here that needs to be fixed in the graphics driver, but the underlying problem which I can assume wont be fixed in ml, of the os allowing this to happen is what's really troubling here.
My Windows 7 install freaks out all the time on my iMac when trying to shove games down its neck. Sometimes the AMD graphics driver restarts, once I got a blue screen and twice already I've had the drivers crash but they didn't recover; so the monitor never came back on and the computer stopped responding to input (even incoming network connections).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mausz
But windows 7 did not crash at the kernel level.
If a program crashes, only the program should crash. If a program crashes a driver, only the driver should crash (and restart). If you can lockup the kernel using a driver this will lead to potential hacks which can run at kernel level.
If just the application fails then good for Windows! If, however, (and you see this quite often with Windows) the entire OS freezes and you can't even move the mouse, then your computer at the hardware level has freaked out completely and halted everything. Some computers signal this error by giving one, low beep tone from the internal speaker. If you don't hear the beep tone then listen for hard disk activity - no activity means halted computer. Its a Kernel Panic++
I'm not saying the Mac doesn't do that (I've had it happen personally), but its definitely a more common occurrence in Windows than on OSX. Chrome on my Work computer has caused this to happen already, so I've uninstalled it and put Chromium (the open source version) on here instead. A few version numbers ahead and running like a dream.
Sure, the problem is though that the os shouldn't kerrnel panic because of that and crash, that's the whole pint of making a robust os in 2012. It should safeguard itself even from the most malicious code. What's also conveniently ommited here is that it's not the intel chip, it's the drivers for the intel chip, there's no problem on the hardware level with the intel chip. This case is revealing a much deeper vulnerability of os x.
Please. I just had a blue screen on my Win 7 x64 box yesterday. No OS can be protected as long as ring 0 access is allowed and that's where these drivers run. But that's what's necessary to provide performance.
Please. I just had a blue screen on my Win 7 x64 box yesterday. No OS can be protected as long as ring 0 access is allowed and that's where these drivers run. But that's what's necessary to provide performance.
Exactly. Graphics drivers almost have to be granted kernel access and it's impossible to prevent a bad driver from having serious consequence. Well, you could, but you'd have to put the drivers in user space and then all the Apple haters would complain about the poor performance.
It's a tradeoff that almost every OS has made and relies on reliable drivers. The bad thing is that it is possible to bring the system down with an application bug. Rare, but it happens.
There are only two solutions:
1. Google fixes Chrome bug to prevent the problem.
2. Rewrite Mac OS X to put all the drivers in user space with all the expense, difficulty, and usability problems it would cause.
His statement is a blatant mistruth. One need only type "graphics blue screen of death" into any search engine for an absurd number of complaints about bug checks ("Blue Screen of Death") in Microsoft Windows caused by graphics drivers. In fact, his statement demonstrates a complete lack of understanding the issue.
Considering the features and performance of Google Chrome for iPhone versus Apple Safari for iPhone there is little to no point in using Google Chrome:
iOS 6 beta 2 on iPhone 4S:
Rightware Browsermark Chrome for iPhone
1. 48158
2. 49222
3. 48777
Rightware Browsermark Safari for iPhone
1. 101458
2. 107252
3. 105743
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Google Chrome for iPhone
1. 6829.8ms
2. 6836.6ms
3. 6834.7ms
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Apple Safari for iPhone
1. 1760.5ms
2. 1752.5ms
3. 1732.5ms
Apple Safari features that Google Chrome lacks; however, in all fairness Google may require one to login to Google for some features which I am not foolish enough to do:
No synchronized tabs
No synchronized bookmarks
No offline reading list
No ability to add to Home Screen
No Fraudulent website warnings
No Facebook integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Message integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Printing (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Twitter integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
Not the most informed post I have to say. Chrome on iOS is slower than Safari as *Apple* does not allow programs which use uiwebview (browsers cannot have their own rendering engine on iOS) to use the Nitro javascript engine.
Chrome does have synchronization of tabs and bookmarks (and in my experience does a better job than iCloud). Of course you need to sign in to use them, how else could that possibly work?! The other features, I'll grant you that.
Tried it once, that was enough, kept crashing due to sneaking in Adobe Flash crap.
Safari works fine, so does Firefox.
My MacBook remains Chrome free, don't need it, don't want it, don't care how popular it is.
I was having trouble last night with my 2010 Air ramping up the fans and using 90% of the CPU. Traced it to Chrome. I do not trust that browser any further than I can spit.
Exactly. Graphics drivers almost have to be granted kernel access and it's impossible to prevent a bad driver from having serious consequence. Well, you could, but you'd have to put the drivers in user space and then all the Apple haters would complain about the poor performance.
It's a tradeoff that almost every OS has made and relies on reliable drivers. The bad thing is that it is possible to bring the system down with an application bug. Rare, but it happens.
There are only two solutions:
1. Google fixes Chrome bug to prevent the problem.
2. Rewrite Mac OS X to put all the drivers in user space with all the expense, difficulty, and usability problems it would cause.
Obviously, the first is more practical.
This is true, but there are *certain* steps an OS can take to mitigate video driver crashes. Windows will attempt to restart a video driver before throwing a BSoD. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946
Chrome was my default browser, but I gave up using it a few months ago because it was causing my 2009 MacBook Pro to freeze every couple of days or so (running current version of OS X). Now I've gone back to using Firefox it never freezes. I occasionally start Chrome just to see if there''s been a software update, because I dare not use it as it is.
Yeah I had a funny feeling Chrome was causing some beach balling here and there, so I deleted Flash, then after a few weeks I just deleted Chrome. Screw it.
Never had problems with Firefox in the past few months, especially hammering 12 website tabs or more (no, not pr9n, I can't handle that level of "stimulation").
Windows will attempt to restart a video driver before throwing a BSoD.
Wow, if I had a dollar for every time Windows actually did that, since, say, Windows 2000, I'd be... broke. Honestly I've only seen it happen in high-end desktop GPUs when overclocking or something where the test application testing GPU stability somehow is able to communicate with Windows well enough to know when it had pushed the GPU too far. Perhaps that's because the GPU overclocker "polls" the system very frequently to keep in touch with how the driver/GPU is doing?
But most other apps and Windows operations, I honestly haven't seen it much at all. Arguably Windows7 finally got 64bit and crashing manageable, ie. back to WinXP2 quality, but you still have all the other Windows issues.
This is true, but there are *certain* steps an OS can take to mitigate video driver crashes. Windows will attempt to restart a video driver before throwing a BSoD. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946
Those circumstances are very rare. The vast majority of graphics driver crashes (or, mostly, any driver running inside kernel space) don't give the system a chance to respond. Boom, you're dead.
Those circumstances are very rare. The vast majority of graphics driver crashes (or, mostly, any driver running inside kernel space) don't give the system a chance to respond. Boom, you're dead.
"The biggest change in the WDDM [driver model since Vista] is that much of the graphics driver has been moved from kernel space to user space."
"In the unlikely event that an application or its UMD does something illegal and causes an error, only that single application will close, leaving the Windows Vista operating system unscathed, allowing the user to continue working."
No not the overclocker; what you describe is precisely what Windows does.
OK fair enough, then I've never seen it from the time of Vista through Windows7 (and I've been through them all, 32bit, 64bit), except in rare times running GPU overclocking apps.
Could it have been working in the background unnoticed at other times? Perhaps, but I still did get BSODs every now and then.
For heaven's sake even in 7 and definitely in Vista, good luck Alt-Tabbing out of a fullscreen game. The moment you do that you pretty much lose all hope of actually returning to your game, unless you're willing to wait 5 minutes or more... Yes this is not a kernel panic as such but you see what I'm trying to illustrate.
So what I would say on the topic of Kernel Panics, is that Windows still has a big history stretching back decades, and arguably they have not addressed it sufficiently.
Those circumstances are very rare. The vast majority of graphics driver crashes (or, mostly, any driver running inside kernel space) don't give the system a chance to respond. Boom, you're dead.
Yup, This^. The running software has to be very clever I think in communicating with the Windows graphics driver, which is precisely what GPU overclocking apps are supposed to do. Other apps, I really don't think they facilitate such Windows fault tolerance stuff. Even games, where you'd imagine it is quite important, I am not sure that they also manage or facilitate fault tolerance well, because most of the time the games or the user is just hammering the GPU and CPU 100% max, churning the HD and maxxing out the RAM too. If a game crashes that's pretty much restart and that's all she wrote.
Obviously I don't know what makes the GPU overclocking apps so good, maybe someone can share?
"the specific combination of Intel HD 4000 chip + flash + Chrome."
Crash, Infection, Java, Flash, Plugin.
Always the same word combinations...
Software running in user mode should NEVER cause the OS to crash. At worst, the OS should freeze or kill an errant process.
Whilst the story here is trying to paint the cause of the crashes as being Google Chrome, the actual cause of the crashes is something within Mac OS X that Chrome has exposed (albeit via a bug within Chrome). It looks like the bug is within the HD4000 graphics driver, and it's likely that the code was supplied by Intel for Apple to integrate into Mac OS X.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
Never had a problem with Chrome personally, though this does sound worrying. I see that Safari is bringing on-board a lot of Chrome's features, such as the omnibox so obviously Apple are fans of Chrome as well.
Glad to hear Google admit that there's a problem rather than ignoring it.
Actually Google are fans of Safari seeing as how that's what Chrome is based on as can be seen in the open source license agreements of Chrome and Android.
Try putting things the right way around the next time.
His statement is a blatant mistruth. One need only type "graphics blue screen of death" into any search engine for an absurd number of complaints about bug checks ("Blue Screen of Death") in Microsoft Windows caused by graphics drivers. In fact, his statement demonstrates a complete lack of understanding the issue.
Considering the features and performance of Google Chrome for iPhone versus Apple Safari for iPhone there is little to no point in using Google Chrome:
iOS 6 beta 2 on iPhone 4S:
Rightware Browsermark Chrome for iPhone
1. 48158
2. 49222
3. 48777
Rightware Browsermark Safari for iPhone
1. 101458
2. 107252
3. 105743
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Google Chrome for iPhone
1. 6829.8ms
2. 6836.6ms
3. 6834.7ms
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Apple Safari for iPhone
1. 1760.5ms
2. 1752.5ms
3. 1732.5ms
Apple Safari features that Google Chrome lacks; however, in all fairness Google may require one to login to Google for some features which I am not foolish enough to do:
No synchronized tabs
No synchronized bookmarks
No offline reading list
No ability to add to Home Screen
No Fraudulent website warnings
No Facebook integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Message integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Printing (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Twitter integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
Chrome was my default browser, but I gave up using it a few months ago because it was causing my 2009 MacBook Pro to freeze every couple of days or so (running current version of OS X). Now I've gone back to using Firefox it never freezes. I occasionally start Chrome just to see if there''s been a software update, because I dare not use it as it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
Actually Google are fans of Safari seeing as how that's what Chrome is based on as can be seen in the open source license agreements of Chrome and Android.
Try putting things the right way around the next time.
Chrome isn't based on Safari, it's based on WebKit. WebKit is an Apple-developed open source rendering engine used by practically every web-browser apart from IE and Firefox.
Ok.
Why is this a major, front-page news item?
It is very possible to pass bad code at the level you are talking about (much closer to the silicon than other calls) if indeed they are trying to optimize the 4000. I can't see to much of and area where you could optimize code via user level calls.The API does allow for some stuff that you can hang yourself with if you are not fastidious in your resource/memory management. Very little else could do that other that a kext. A well written and thoroughly tested app should not see this.
There is not anything in the OS to keep poorly behaved code (badly written) from crashing an app. From what I read it simply crashed…
The moral of the story is stay away from third party browsers (and other Google and Adobe code -- they both have a track record of putting out good ideas without the best QA) until someone else has shaken it out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by myapplelove
All joking and google bashing aside, it's shocking how this can happen to os x in 2012, a gfx driver crash hasn't brought down windows since vista in what 2007? The graphics stack should simply restart without bringing down the whole os. There 's a problem here that needs to be fixed in the graphics driver, but the underlying problem which I can assume wont be fixed in ml, of the os allowing this to happen is what's really troubling here.
My Windows 7 install freaks out all the time on my iMac when trying to shove games down its neck. Sometimes the AMD graphics driver restarts, once I got a blue screen and twice already I've had the drivers crash but they didn't recover; so the monitor never came back on and the computer stopped responding to input (even incoming network connections).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mausz
But windows 7 did not crash at the kernel level.
If a program crashes, only the program should crash. If a program crashes a driver, only the driver should crash (and restart). If you can lockup the kernel using a driver this will lead to potential hacks which can run at kernel level.
If just the application fails then good for Windows! If, however, (and you see this quite often with Windows) the entire OS freezes and you can't even move the mouse, then your computer at the hardware level has freaked out completely and halted everything. Some computers signal this error by giving one, low beep tone from the internal speaker. If you don't hear the beep tone then listen for hard disk activity - no activity means halted computer. Its a Kernel Panic++
I'm not saying the Mac doesn't do that (I've had it happen personally), but its definitely a more common occurrence in Windows than on OSX. Chrome on my Work computer has caused this to happen already, so I've uninstalled it and put Chromium (the open source version) on here instead. A few version numbers ahead and running like a dream.
Quote:
Originally Posted by myapplelove
Sure, the problem is though that the os shouldn't kerrnel panic because of that and crash, that's the whole pint of making a robust os in 2012. It should safeguard itself even from the most malicious code. What's also conveniently ommited here is that it's not the intel chip, it's the drivers for the intel chip, there's no problem on the hardware level with the intel chip. This case is revealing a much deeper vulnerability of os x.
Please. I just had a blue screen on my Win 7 x64 box yesterday. No OS can be protected as long as ring 0 access is allowed and that's where these drivers run. But that's what's necessary to provide performance.
Exactly. Graphics drivers almost have to be granted kernel access and it's impossible to prevent a bad driver from having serious consequence. Well, you could, but you'd have to put the drivers in user space and then all the Apple haters would complain about the poor performance.
It's a tradeoff that almost every OS has made and relies on reliable drivers. The bad thing is that it is possible to bring the system down with an application bug. Rare, but it happens.
There are only two solutions:
1. Google fixes Chrome bug to prevent the problem.
2. Rewrite Mac OS X to put all the drivers in user space with all the expense, difficulty, and usability problems it would cause.
Obviously, the first is more practical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
His statement is a blatant mistruth. One need only type "graphics blue screen of death" into any search engine for an absurd number of complaints about bug checks ("Blue Screen of Death") in Microsoft Windows caused by graphics drivers. In fact, his statement demonstrates a complete lack of understanding the issue.
Considering the features and performance of Google Chrome for iPhone versus Apple Safari for iPhone there is little to no point in using Google Chrome:
iOS 6 beta 2 on iPhone 4S:
Rightware Browsermark Chrome for iPhone
1. 48158
2. 49222
3. 48777
Rightware Browsermark Safari for iPhone
1. 101458
2. 107252
3. 105743
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Google Chrome for iPhone
1. 6829.8ms
2. 6836.6ms
3. 6834.7ms
Sunspider JavaScript 0.9.1 Apple Safari for iPhone
1. 1760.5ms
2. 1752.5ms
3. 1732.5ms
Apple Safari features that Google Chrome lacks; however, in all fairness Google may require one to login to Google for some features which I am not foolish enough to do:
No synchronized tabs
No synchronized bookmarks
No offline reading list
No ability to add to Home Screen
No Fraudulent website warnings
No Facebook integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Message integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Printing (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
No Twitter integration (likely to change in update prior to or once iOS 6 is released)
Not the most informed post I have to say. Chrome on iOS is slower than Safari as *Apple* does not allow programs which use uiwebview (browsers cannot have their own rendering engine on iOS) to use the Nitro javascript engine.
Chrome does have synchronization of tabs and bookmarks (and in my experience does a better job than iCloud). Of course you need to sign in to use them, how else could that possibly work?! The other features, I'll grant you that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
Tried it once, that was enough, kept crashing due to sneaking in Adobe Flash crap.
Safari works fine, so does Firefox.
My MacBook remains Chrome free, don't need it, don't want it, don't care how popular it is.
I was having trouble last night with my 2010 Air ramping up the fans and using 90% of the CPU. Traced it to Chrome. I do not trust that browser any further than I can spit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Exactly. Graphics drivers almost have to be granted kernel access and it's impossible to prevent a bad driver from having serious consequence. Well, you could, but you'd have to put the drivers in user space and then all the Apple haters would complain about the poor performance.
It's a tradeoff that almost every OS has made and relies on reliable drivers. The bad thing is that it is possible to bring the system down with an application bug. Rare, but it happens.
There are only two solutions:
1. Google fixes Chrome bug to prevent the problem.
2. Rewrite Mac OS X to put all the drivers in user space with all the expense, difficulty, and usability problems it would cause.
Obviously, the first is more practical.
This is true, but there are *certain* steps an OS can take to mitigate video driver crashes. Windows will attempt to restart a video driver before throwing a BSoD. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2665946
Yeah I had a funny feeling Chrome was causing some beach balling here and there, so I deleted Flash, then after a few weeks I just deleted Chrome. Screw it.
Never had problems with Firefox in the past few months, especially hammering 12 website tabs or more (no, not pr9n, I can't handle that level of "stimulation").
Wow, if I had a dollar for every time Windows actually did that, since, say, Windows 2000, I'd be... broke. Honestly I've only seen it happen in high-end desktop GPUs when overclocking or something where the test application testing GPU stability somehow is able to communicate with Windows well enough to know when it had pushed the GPU too far. Perhaps that's because the GPU overclocker "polls" the system very frequently to keep in touch with how the driver/GPU is doing?
But most other apps and Windows operations, I honestly haven't seen it much at all. Arguably Windows7 finally got 64bit and crashing manageable, ie. back to WinXP2 quality, but you still have all the other Windows issues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sr2012
Wow, if I had a dollar for every time Windows actually did that, since, say, Windows 2000, I'd be... broke.
It's only been a feature since Vista.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDDM#Enhanced_fault-tolerance
Quote:
Originally Posted by sr2012
Perhaps that's because the GPU overclocker "polls" the system very frequently to keep in touch with how the driver/GPU is doing?
No not the overclocker; what you describe is precisely what Windows does.
Those circumstances are very rare. The vast majority of graphics driver crashes (or, mostly, any driver running inside kernel space) don't give the system a chance to respond. Boom, you're dead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Those circumstances are very rare. The vast majority of graphics driver crashes (or, mostly, any driver running inside kernel space) don't give the system a chance to respond. Boom, you're dead.
"The biggest change in the WDDM [driver model since Vista] is that much of the graphics driver has been moved from kernel space to user space."
"In the unlikely event that an application or its UMD does something illegal and causes an error, only that single application will close, leaving the Windows Vista operating system unscathed, allowing the user to continue working."
Source: http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/ATIWDDMWhitepaperFinalV38.pdf
OK fair enough, then I've never seen it from the time of Vista through Windows7 (and I've been through them all, 32bit, 64bit), except in rare times running GPU overclocking apps.
Could it have been working in the background unnoticed at other times? Perhaps, but I still did get BSODs every now and then.
For heaven's sake even in 7 and definitely in Vista, good luck Alt-Tabbing out of a fullscreen game. The moment you do that you pretty much lose all hope of actually returning to your game, unless you're willing to wait 5 minutes or more... Yes this is not a kernel panic as such but you see what I'm trying to illustrate.
So what I would say on the topic of Kernel Panics, is that Windows still has a big history stretching back decades, and arguably they have not addressed it sufficiently.
Yup, This^. The running software has to be very clever I think in communicating with the Windows graphics driver, which is precisely what GPU overclocking apps are supposed to do. Other apps, I really don't think they facilitate such Windows fault tolerance stuff. Even games, where you'd imagine it is quite important, I am not sure that they also manage or facilitate fault tolerance well, because most of the time the games or the user is just hammering the GPU and CPU 100% max, churning the HD and maxxing out the RAM too. If a game crashes that's pretty much restart and that's all she wrote.
Obviously I don't know what makes the GPU overclocking apps so good, maybe someone can share?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GTR
"the specific combination of Intel HD 4000 chip + flash + Chrome."
Crash, Infection, Java, Flash, Plugin.
Always the same word combinations...
Software running in user mode should NEVER cause the OS to crash. At worst, the OS should freeze or kill an errant process.
Whilst the story here is trying to paint the cause of the crashes as being Google Chrome, the actual cause of the crashes is something within Mac OS X that Chrome has exposed (albeit via a bug within Chrome). It looks like the bug is within the HD4000 graphics driver, and it's likely that the code was supplied by Intel for Apple to integrate into Mac OS X.