4 ms·

AFAIK the main missing feature in WebAssembly that PNaCl had is shared-memory multithreading and that is implemented and waiting on spec finalization to ship. W

by roca 9y ago

AFAIK the main missing feature in WebAssembly that PNaCl had is shared-memory multithreading and that is implemented and waiting on spec finalization to ship. What else is there?

angry_octet 9y ago
Security (code signing, timing determinism, large API attack surface, complex javascript interpreter/jit), performance (obvious deficit between an IR bytecode and jit, static analysis vs runtime checks), concurrency (how many cores on your new 2017 box? By 2027?), features (the p/nacl api let you do more, like access devices for video/graphics/audio; instead it will be an implementation specific thing; networking - open sockets to unrelated hosts; same origin is a straight jacket), elegance (wasm/asm.js/js is just hack, hack, hack; thanks Mozilla), maturity (just bugs need time to be sorted).
- roca 9y ago
  I don't think PNaCl guarantees timing determinism. Not sure what you mean by "code signing" in this context. The API attack surface is a non-issue; it's already accessible by any page that serves a PNaCl object. There's a small performance deficit but it's getting smaller. AOT compilation and caching of compilation results is possible; asm.js did it. I already mentioned shared-memory parallelism (it's just about done); did you read what I wrote? Standard cross-browser Web APIs give you access to those devices already. Same-origin is a strait-jacket --- a necessary one. "Break the Web's security model" isn't a desirable feature. "Elegance" is just a point of view. From another point of view, "duplicate everything in the Web platform" is not elegant. As for maturity and bugs --- having multiple interoperating implementations and real specifications is a good way to drive competition on quality ... and to distinguish "this is a bug, fix it" from "hello de-facto standard!"
- roca 9y ago
  Also "static analysis vs runtime checks" is a red herring --- PNaCl and Wasm are basically identical in those respects.

by roca 9y ago

AFAIK the main missing feature in WebAssembly that PNaCl had is shared-memory multithreading and that is implemented and waiting on spec finalization to ship. What else is there?

angry_octet 9y ago

Security (code signing, timing determinism, large API attack surface, complex javascript interpreter/jit), performance (obvious deficit between an IR bytecode and jit, static analysis vs runtime checks), concurrency (how many cores on your new 2017 box? By 2027?), features (the p/nacl api let you do more, like access devices for video/graphics/audio; instead it will be an implementation specific thing; networking - open sockets to unrelated hosts; same origin is a straight jacket), elegance (wasm/asm.js/js is just hack, hack, hack; thanks Mozilla), maturity (just bugs need time to be sorted).

roca 9y ago
I don't think PNaCl guarantees timing determinism. Not sure what you mean by "code signing" in this context. The API attack surface is a non-issue; it's already accessible by any page that serves a PNaCl object. There's a small performance deficit but it's getting smaller. AOT compilation and caching of compilation results is possible; asm.js did it. I already mentioned shared-memory parallelism (it's just about done); did you read what I wrote? Standard cross-browser Web APIs give you access to those devices already. Same-origin is a strait-jacket --- a necessary one. "Break the Web's security model" isn't a desirable feature. "Elegance" is just a point of view. From another point of view, "duplicate everything in the Web platform" is not elegant. As for maturity and bugs --- having multiple interoperating implementations and real specifications is a good way to drive competition on quality ... and to distinguish "this is a bug, fix it" from "hello de-facto standard!"
roca 9y ago
Also "static analysis vs runtime checks" is a red herring --- PNaCl and Wasm are basically identical in those respects.