The feature is called Tab Unloading, and weirdly enough they made it not easy to access despite its usefulness.
You basically have to type about:unloads in the address bar and hit enter. If you then click on “Unload”, it will put the least used tabs to sleep. If you keep clicking that button until it’s greyed out, you’ll have unloaded all your tabs from memory.
This feature is handy if you want to temporarily switch to something that is memory hungry without having to close your 100 tabs.
No, no you don’t. IF you aren’t accessing stuff on them, you don’t need them open. Keeping 100 tabs open for later, is stupid.
It also doesn’t affect performance because Chrome closes them as needed so why not?