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It only works in Chrome, which is a pretty big issue. Per wikipedia [0], other browsers rejected PNaCL because they don't like the idea of web apps running bin

It only works in Chrome, which is a pretty big issue. Per wikipedia [0], other browsers rejected PNaCL because they don't like the idea of web apps running binaries as that represents a black box for most users. In comparison, wasm is "more open". Wasm code has a human-readable text equivalent (although, frankly, the number of people who will be able to make sense of it is not high and doesn't include me). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client#Detractors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client#Detractor...

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
What will it take to get WebAssembly performance more in line?
- Rusky 7y ago
  I don't have a good overview but the last time I saw wasm-generated assembly it (e.g. firefox's compiler) was very very bad at actually using x86 addressing modes and other peephole-like "optimization" leading to high instruction counts and code size. This is something that will easily improve over time without a ton of work.
mintplant 7y ago
(P)NaCl was also essentially defined by Chromium's implementation, so difficult to reproduce from scratch; and tightly intertwined with the surrounding Chromium codebase, so that implementation was difficult to port to other browsers. Its success depended on a total Chromium monoculture.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Another problem was compile times - getting an efficient emit and compile time for LLVM IR was difficult and involved having to heavily optimize/replace lots of parts of LLVM's pipeline that were never designed for turbo speed because it wasn't a priority.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Machine code can be disassembled to text form. What's different?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
snek 7y ago
On the note of webassembly's text format (WAT), it's a fantastic introduction into a low level assembly. Wasm is a virtual stack machine, and it's strongly statically typed, so WAT is surprisingly readable. That being said, if the WAT you're reading wasn't hand-written, it's probably going to be unreadable anyway. Here's an example of some mutex operations in WAT: https://gist.github.com/devsnek/9274f1420b7641d1b6c34141921f0851 https://gist.github.com/devsnek/9274f1420b7641d1b6c34141921f...
- erk__ 7y ago
  The livestreaming site twitch.tv uses wasm for their player, so you download a fifty something blob which is not too open I feel. I tried to have a look at it in wat and it was sadly pretty hard to figure out what was going on.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago

What will it take to get WebAssembly performance more in line?

Rusky 7y ago
I don't have a good overview but the last time I saw wasm-generated assembly it (e.g. firefox's compiler) was very very bad at actually using x86 addressing modes and other peephole-like "optimization" leading to high instruction counts and code size. This is something that will easily improve over time without a ton of work.

mintplant 7y ago

(P)NaCl was also essentially defined by Chromium's implementation, so difficult to reproduce from scratch; and tightly intertwined with the surrounding Chromium codebase, so that implementation was difficult to port to other browsers. Its success depended on a total Chromium monoculture.

kevingadd 7y ago
Another problem was compile times - getting an efficient emit and compile time for LLVM IR was difficult and involved having to heavily optimize/replace lots of parts of LLVM's pipeline that were never designed for turbo speed because it wasn't a priority.

vbezhenar 7y ago

Machine code can be disassembled to text form. What's different?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

snek 7y ago

On the note of webassembly's text format (WAT), it's a fantastic introduction into a low level assembly. Wasm is a virtual stack machine, and it's strongly statically typed, so WAT is surprisingly readable. That being said, if the WAT you're reading wasn't hand-written, it's probably going to be unreadable anyway. Here's an example of some mutex operations in WAT: https://gist.github.com/devsnek/9274f1420b7641d1b6c34141921f0851 https://gist.github.com/devsnek/9274f1420b7641d1b6c34141921f...

erk__ 7y ago
The livestreaming site twitch.tv uses wasm for their player, so you download a fifty something blob which is not too open I feel. I tried to have a look at it in wat and it was sadly pretty hard to figure out what was going on.