Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C • Hacker News Board

Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#1

Post by sound_and_form » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C
github.com

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#2

Post by setheron » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

The neater article seems to be about M3 interpreter https://github.com/soundandform/m3#m3-massey-meta-machine

Tbh, I couldn't get the eureka moment though. Might try to read in the AM ;)

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#3

Post by 29athrowaway » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

The motivation for WebAssembly rather than plain ARM or x86 assembly = portability, security.

It would be interesting to see how this is designed for security in mind.

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#4

Post by CharlesW » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

Why is an interpreter desirable when JIT compilers create significantly faster code? Is this primarily about embedded use?

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#5

Post by Koshkin » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #4

Why is an interpreter desirable when JIT compilers create significantly faster code? Is this primarily about embedded use?

On the embedded side, I'd rather see a hardware interpreter.

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#6

Post by leetrout » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #5

CharlesW wrote: post #4

Why is an interpreter desirable when JIT compilers create significantly faster code? Is this primarily about embedded use?

On the embedded side, I'd rather see a hardware interpreter.

I'm hardware ignorant... would that be a system on a chip?

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#7

Post by kick » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #3

The motivation for WebAssembly rather than plain ARM or x86 assembly = portability, security. It would be interesting to see how this is designed for security in mind.

This is designed for microcontrollers. If you're running untrusted code on microcontrollers, you've got bigger problems.

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#8

Post by DarthGhandi » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #3

The motivation for WebAssembly rather than plain ARM or x86 assembly = portability, security. It would be interesting to see how this is designed for security in mind.

Pardon my wasm illiteracy here, what exactly makes it more secure?

Struggling to see it.

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#9

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #6

Koshkin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the embedded side, I'd rather see a hardware interpreter.

I'm hardware ignorant... would that be a system on a chip?

I suspect they're just saying they'd rather see a CPU implementing the wasm isa, in a facetious way.

Re: Wasm3 – A high performance WebAssembly interpreter in C

#10

Post by Matthias247 » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #4

Why is an interpreter desirable when JIT compilers create significantly faster code? Is this primarily about embedded use?

Besides that it can help with startup time. If the script that needs to be executed is a one-off thing the removal of compilation time might be save more time than a JIT could save during execution.