3 ms·

Why WASM can't give native performance?? (games in a browser?). All demos I saw only gives 8-10x performance boost?? (with respect to JS)

by tandav 9y ago

steveklabnik 9y ago
> Why WASM can't give native performance? As with any language, it depends on how good the optimizations are; wasm is designed to be able to be JITted fast, but is still fairly new, so there's still stuff left on the table. Additionally if you're compiling a language to wasm, you're also at the mercy of that compiler as well, so it always depends. > only 8-10x performance boost I'll take it ;)
- tmzt 9y ago
  > Additionally if you're compiling a language to wasm, you're also at the mercy of that compiler as well, so it always depends. and potentially runtime, depending on the language you are compiling from
  - dangerbird2 9y ago
    Most wasm toolchains use clang for c/c++, so poor compiler generation is rarely a significant issue. IIRC, the emscripten toolchain uses musl as the C runtime, which is reasonably performant runtime. Of course, if you write algorithmically inefficient code, no toolchain is going to improve it.
flohofwoe 9y ago
WASM currently doesn't support SIMD and threading, other than that it is already close to single-threaded native performance (usually within 1.2x to 1.5x, there are some runtime checks happening after all). Frankly, I would be surprised to see well-written Javascript code that's consistently 8x to 10x slower than (single-threaded, non-SIMD) native performance. You have spikes from GC and re-compilation, but JITed JS is not that slow.
dangerbird2 9y ago
WASM is not native code, so there's no guarantee it will have the same performance. There have been earlier attempts to have cross-browser and cross-platform native code execution on the web, not to mention plenty of nonportable web plugins, but WASM's just-in-time compilation of a low-level bytecode is a good balance between performance across different architectures and feasibility of sandboxing code execution (you don't want a web app to gain access to your filesystem and kernel syscalls with impunity)

Why WASM can't give native performance?? (games in a browser?). All demos I saw only gives 8-10x performance boost?? (with respect to JS)

by tandav 9y ago

Why WASM can't give native performance?? (games in a browser?). All demos I saw only gives 8-10x performance boost?? (with respect to JS)

steveklabnik 9y ago

> Why WASM can't give native performance? As with any language, it depends on how good the optimizations are; wasm is designed to be able to be JITted fast, but is still fairly new, so there's still stuff left on the table. Additionally if you're compiling a language to wasm, you're also at the mercy of that compiler as well, so it always depends. > only 8-10x performance boost I'll take it ;)

tmzt 9y ago
> Additionally if you're compiling a language to wasm, you're also at the mercy of that compiler as well, so it always depends. and potentially runtime, depending on the language you are compiling from
- dangerbird2 9y ago
  Most wasm toolchains use clang for c/c++, so poor compiler generation is rarely a significant issue. IIRC, the emscripten toolchain uses musl as the C runtime, which is reasonably performant runtime. Of course, if you write algorithmically inefficient code, no toolchain is going to improve it.

flohofwoe 9y ago

WASM currently doesn't support SIMD and threading, other than that it is already close to single-threaded native performance (usually within 1.2x to 1.5x, there are some runtime checks happening after all). Frankly, I would be surprised to see well-written Javascript code that's consistently 8x to 10x slower than (single-threaded, non-SIMD) native performance. You have spikes from GC and re-compilation, but JITed JS is not that slow.

dangerbird2 9y ago

WASM is not native code, so there's no guarantee it will have the same performance. There have been earlier attempts to have cross-browser and cross-platform native code execution on the web, not to mention plenty of nonportable web plugins, but WASM's just-in-time compilation of a low-level bytecode is a good balance between performance across different architectures and feasibility of sandboxing code execution (you don't want a web app to gain access to your filesystem and kernel syscalls with impunity)