Is WebAssembly Memory64 worth using?

Post by TekMol » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8:02 AM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #19

TekMol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why does WASM exist? If someone wants to compile whatever other language to run in the browser, why not just compile it to well-written JavaScript?

Simple: Javascript can focus on being a human-friendly programming language, while WASM can focus on being a compile target. If you've been around in the asm.js times, this conflict was a real concern.

Post by TekMol » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8:04 AM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #21

TekMol wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why does WASM exist? If someone wants to compile whatever other language to run in the browser, why not just compile it to well-written JavaScript?

Mozilla tried that with asmjs. Turns out javascript has pretty half-assed semantics (notably around integer types), nobody wants to expand it to a useful compilation (asmjs was mostly an optimisation for hand-written code) target, and few want to compile to text, especially javascript. Having a proper and well defined ISA is a lot more compelling. Not only that, but it allows WASM-only compilers and runtimes with non…

Post by flohofwoe » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8:09 AM UTC

mwkaufma wrote: post #30

flohofwoe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but think of DCC applications like Figma which might run into the 4 GB restriction with large data sets, not regular websites which run a couple of WebGL demos written in C. ...also WASM is starting to become popular outside the browser where requirements might be very different from running stuff in webpages.

Let figma ask me for explicit permission first, then, as opposed to making Memory64 support implicitly available.

Post by flohofwoe » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8:16 AM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #34

TekMol wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it sound like WASM only exists because of the nerdy preferences of compiler makers, not because of any benefits to the users of applications? If speed is fine, why would a user care if the application was compiled to a language with "half-assed semantics" in a text format?

I don't think speed is fine. Here's a write-up from Mozilla which talks about the performance benefits of WASM compared to asm.js: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/03/why-webassembly-is-faster-...

Post by tyushk » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

TekMol wrote: post #27

pjmlp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that easily with binaryen already, and make use of parseText(). https://web.dev/articles/binaryen

Not sure what you mean. I guess this is a misunderstanding. What I mean is that I would like something like this to work: code = `( func $add (param $a i32) (param $b i32) (result i32) local.get $a local.get $b i32.add )`; module = WebAssembly.compile(code); alert(module.add(3, 5)); // alerts "8".

    let wast = require("./wast.js");
    let binary = wast.WebAssemblyText.encode("(module)");