InfoQ Homepage WebAssembly Content on InfoQ
-
The "Wasmer" WebAssembly Runtime is Generally Available
Wasmer recently released version 1.0 of its server-side WebAssembly runtime, and it is now generally available. Wasmer enables super lightweight containers based on WebAssembly. Version 1.0 marks a significant milestone on a journey, which started more than two years ago with version 0.1.0. It is an indicator of the growing interest in WebAssembly on the server-side.
-
Rust China Conf 2020 Showcases Production-Ready Rust Applications
Rust China Conf is the largest grassroots event for the Rust programming language in China. As Amazon, Microsoft, and others in the US, Chinese tech companies are increasingly using Rust in mission-critical production software systems. Huawei, Bytedance (parent company of Tiktok), Ant Group, Agora, and other big companies and startups showed how they used Rust at the confernce.
-
New Chrome Extension to Debug Compiled Wasm Code Stepping through C++ Source Files
Google recently presented the progress made by the Chrome DevTools teams to improve the developer experience of debugging WebAssembly files. A new extension (in beta) allows developers to debug C and C++ apps compiled to WebAssembly by stepping through the original source code.
-
Bytecode Alliance Lays out Plans for WebAssembly on the Server-Side
Bytecode Alliance laid out a concrete vision for wasm-on-the-server. At the same time, the Wasm open-source community is now far larger than the corporations in Bytecode Alliance. There are multiple Wasm VM implementations, complier toolchains for programming languages, as well as host Operating Systems and environments (e.g., Node.js, Deno, or blockchains).
-
Markdown-Wasm, a Very Fast Markdown Parser Written in WebAssembly
Rasmus Andersson released markdown-wasm, a very fast Markdown parser ported from C to WebAssembly. markdown-wasm is twice as fast as the best JavaScript Markdown parser in one benchmark. markdown-wasm remains additionally small (31KB gzipped).
-
WebAssembly Reference Types Implemented in wasmtime, Lets Wasm Modules Handle Complex Types
Nick Fitzgerald recently announced the implementation of the WebAssembly reference types proposal in wasmtime. With reference types, a WebAssembly runtime can handle references to complex host objects (e,g, DOM nodes) instead of only integer and floating-point values. Reference types pave the way for more WebAssembly features – interface types, garbage collection, module linking, and more.
-
Zoom on Web: WebAssembly SIMD, WebTransport, and WebCodecs
At the recent web.dev live event, Google V8 product manager Thomas Nattestad explained some of the proposed additions to the web to support Zoom and other video conferencing features within the web browser.
-
WebAssembly Used to Extend Life of Flash Legacy Content
Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player after December 31, 2020. The large amount of Flash content accumulated over the years is however not entirely lost. Ruffle, a Flash emulator, and CheerpX, an x86 virtualization technology, both leverage WebAssembly to play .swf files in the browser.
-
Krustlet: a kubelet Written in Rust to Run WebAssembly Workloads in Kubernetes
Deis Labs has released Krustlet, an open-source Kubernetes kubelet written in Rust to run web assembly workloads within Kubernetes. Krustlet's initial version is functional to run an essential workload as it doesn't have support for features like pod events or Init Containers yet. Applications must implement the WebAssembly system interface (WASI) as Krustlet only runs WebAssembly containers.
-
WebAssembly Extended with Hot Reloading, Remote Debugging and Uniform Hardware Access
Researchers recently presented WARDuino, an extension to WebAssembly targeting microcontrollers. WARDuino addresses common development pain points by adding live code updates, remote debugging, and access to the microcontroller’s hardware modules. WARDuino’s virtual machine runs five times faster than Espruino (a popular JavaScript interpreter for microcontrollers) on some benchmarks.
-
Space-Efficient Full-Text Search with Rust and WebAssembly
Matthias Endler, backend engineer for Trivago, published a client-side full-text search engine designed for space efficiency by leveraging Bloom filters. Tinysearch is written in Rust, transpiled to WebAssembly, and used in the browser. Tinysearch claims sizes between 50 and 100KB and can only index full words.
-
WebAssembly: Building a Secure-by-Default Ecosystem - Lin Clark at WebAssembly Summit
Lin Clark, principal research engineer at Mozilla focusing on WebAssembly and Rust, discussed at the WebAssembly Summit the security challenges WebAssembly must address. Clark explained how the nano-process proposal strives to provide portable, secure-by-default WebAssembly modules.
-
Building a Containerless Future with WebAssembly - Kevin Hoffman at WebAssembly Summit
Kevin Hoffman discussed at the WebAssembly summit the current state of the art in WebAssembly and what can be built with it today. Hoffman peeked at a containerless future where WebAssembly modules are the de-facto unit of immutable deployment in the cloud, at the edge, and in IoT and embedded devices.
-
WebAssembly, Expanding the Pie - Ben Smith at WebAssembly Summit
Ben Smith, chair of the Web|Assembly community group, recalled at WebAssembly Summit the beginnings of WebAssembly and how it has increased and refined its scope and capabilities.
-
Ashley Williams Discusses the Future of WebAssembly at the WebAssembly Summit
Ashley Williams, systems engineer at Cloudflare, gave at WebAssembly Summit her understanding of the things that WebAssembly needs to be successful.