What exactly is 'Google Chrome Helper (GPU)'?

Question

What exactly is 'Google Chrome Helper (GPU)', and (aside from having two chrome instances open with ~15 tabs in each), is there anything I can do to reduce its memory use? Is its (high) memory use affected by me not having a dedicated GPU?

Answer 1

What exactly is 'Google Chrome Helper (GPU)'

It could be a chrome tab, extension, process, or a subframe.

and (aside from having two chrome instances open with ~15 tabs in each), is there anything I can do to reduce its memory use?

close tabs and use a single instance of chrome

Is its (high) memory use affected by me not having a dedicated GPU?

nope

Answer to followup question about determining the cost of specific helpers:

Open Chrome Task Manager via Shift + Esc and look for tasks that are consuming high memory.