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Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

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Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#11

After this gained prominence I took a hard read of Koopman's Stack Computers: The New Wave intent on writing an interpreter. I sought some optimization properties that would apply to the modern requirements for ILP, OoE and parallelization at low core frequencies -- none are offered. This manifests in WASM, and the criticism was elaborated very well: http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/ > This essent…

> ILP, OoE Moron here, what is that in this context?

You're not a moron. The use of acronyms (yeah, yeah, "initialisms") is bad writing unless you are 98% sure that your audience is familiar with them.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ILP, OoE Moron here, what is that in this context?

You're not a moron. The use of acronyms (yeah, yeah, "initialisms") is bad writing unless you are 98% sure that your audience is familiar with them.

Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article.

(Nothing wrong with not being familiar, i wasn't either, but it was totally reasonable for original poster to use them in context)

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#13
post #12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not a moron. The use of acronyms (yeah, yeah, "initialisms") is bad writing unless you are 98% sure that your audience is familiar with them.

Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article. (Nothing wrong with not being familiar, i wasn't either, but it was totally reasonable for original poster to use them in context)

> Its a comment chain on a tech site not an introductory article.

Yes, but it's a tech site with a broad audience. I still think it's nicer to avoid any but the most commonly understood acronyms. It's a hard call to make but there's no harm erring on the side of caution.

Maybe I'm too prickly on this topic. In this particular case I think it's probably OK but I often see people misjudge this to the point where it's genuinely confusing for most of the audience.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#15
post #10
post #9

After the move to WASM you can no longer use TCP/UDP sockets in your extensions and must rely on WebSockets/WebRTC instead, which is a shame. See https://developer.chrome.com/docs/native-client/migration/ (see the "PPB_TCPSocket and PPB_UDPSocket" section).

You sort of can, if you don't mind piping your traffic through wireguard for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNS4en4JyGo

That requires another node... I want a direct connection to the outside.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#16
post #6

After this gained prominence I took a hard read of Koopman's Stack Computers: The New Wave intent on writing an interpreter. I sought some optimization properties that would apply to the modern requirements for ILP, OoE and parallelization at low core frequencies -- none are offered. This manifests in WASM, and the criticism was elaborated very well: http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/ > This essent…

You'd like the browser to run code optimization phases?

It does already. Wasm compilers in browsers do tiering and inlining.

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#17
post #10
post #9

After the move to WASM you can no longer use TCP/UDP sockets in your extensions and must rely on WebSockets/WebRTC instead, which is a shame. See https://developer.chrome.com/docs/native-client/migration/ (see the "PPB_TCPSocket and PPB_UDPSocket" section).

You sort of can, if you don't mind piping your traffic through wireguard for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNS4en4JyGo

Is UDP-over-WebSocket built in to WireGuard, or is this really tunneling browser WS/UDP proxy WireGuard?

Re: Goodbye PNaCl, Hello WebAssembly (2017)

#18

After this gained prominence I took a hard read of Koopman's Stack Computers: The New Wave intent on writing an interpreter. I sought some optimization properties that would apply to the modern requirements for ILP, OoE and parallelization at low core frequencies -- none are offered. This manifests in WASM, and the criticism was elaborated very well: http://troubles.md/posts/wasm-is-not-a-stack-machine/ > This essent…

Sadly, the compiler/software optimization for stack machines is a neglected field in computer architecture evolution.

If you are interested in this, you might find these useful.

1) Optimisation Techniques for Stack Based Architectures - Christopher Bailey

2) Investigating Opportunities for Instruction-Level Parallelism for Stack Machine Code - Shi Huibin

3) Second-Generation Stack Computer Architecture - Charles Laforest

[1] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati...

[2] https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~chrisb/main-pages/publicati...

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