10 ms·

Wasmer 2.2

98 points by wiqar 5y ago

syrusakbary 5y ago
Hi HN! Syrus here, from the Wasmer team. We have been working hard on this release that adds support for ARM64 and Apple M1 chipsets in Singlepass (our compiler, mostly used in Web3/Blockchain environments). In Wasmer we aim to make software universally available (regardless programming languages, operating systems or chipset used), by leveraging on WebAssembly. Let me know if you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer them!
- tester756 5y ago
  Hi I've got excited about WebAssembly and used it with C#'s Blazor but I feel like it moves incredibly slow, especially things like GC / DOM Access, etc. It feels like we're getting closer and closer to half of the decade How do you see it?
  - syrusakbary 5y ago
    I think WebAssembly is going to play a key role in Universal Computing. In my impression, the pace for moving some Wasm specs forward could be improved, but there are big players that need to be aligned and that has a cost. On the other hand, the ecosystem is really picking up a good pace and there are new players and tools being launched everyday. I'm personally very excited to know where we are heading as a community!
- stevemk14ebr 5y ago
  Bumping no_std support up the priority queue would be extremely welcome.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Yes, I would really love to put this on the Precurser device.
hoten 5y ago
I see "an unexpected error has occured" on mobile chrome milliseconds after the article content renders (and is then hidden) This is across the entire site.
- syrusakbary 5y ago
  Thanks for the heads up... looking into it! EDIT: I did tested in Safari and Chrome (iOS) and things are working properly there. Do you have JS enabled? Could you provide more details that will help reproducing the issue? Thanks!
  - hoten 5y ago
    It's working now.
fimdomeio 5y ago
Can someone explain me what's the connection between wasmer, web3 and blockchain?
- eatonphil 5y ago
  I was confused what you could possibly mean by that but then I read the opening paragraph: > The Wasmer 2.2 release features significant advancements shaping up to impact our Web3 and blockchain community in a big way. Wasmer is reintroducing Aarch64 compatibility for our Singlepass compiler. With the newly overhauled Singlepass, Web3 and blockchain developers can efficiently run Wasmer Runtime with Singepass on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The new release also fully supports the much anticipated Apple M1 processor. And since the rest of the post doesn't mention anything more, I share your curiosity.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    WASM is a technology that has good security and isolation. So some people try to use it as underlying technology for smart contracts. So the reality is, its just and WASM and lots of people trying to build stuff on WASM.
  - maxmcd 5y ago
    Looks like some wasmer users (sponsors?) are crypto companies taking advantage of the isolation/sandboxing properties of wasm/wasmer. https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aspacemeshos+wasmer&type=code https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aspacemeshos+wasmer&type=co... https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acosmos+wasmer&type=code https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acosmos+wasmer&type=code
- jadbox 5y ago
  Several blockchains like NEAR are using WASM, but I could only find these resources about blockchains using Wasmer: https://wasmer.io/case-studies/confio https://wasmer.io/case-studies/confio https://cosmwasm.com/ https://cosmwasm.com/ "CosmWasm is supporting fourteen different Cosmos projects, including Terra, Regen Network, and Crypto.com"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Shadonototra 5y ago
I never understood the need of such stuff WASM only good for client side web browsers, anything is a pure waste of time and human resources
- syrusakbary 5y ago
  I have good news! Wasmer can also be run on the browser. Check out wasmer-js [1] [1] https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-js/ https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-js/
  - Shadonototra 5y ago
    node-js? no thanks What's up with Rust people bloating everything?
    - n42 5y ago
      Do you want to have a conversation, or are you just here to complain?
- stevemk14ebr 5y ago
  Wasm is a sandbox first off. Any situation where you want to isolate a computation is an application suitable for wasm. Browser is just one instance of that
- simonw 5y ago
  WASM is exciting for so much more than browsers. I'm a Python developer. Two needs I have for WASM are: - I want to use libraries like ffmpeg without first figuring out how to compile them and talk to them through Python bindings. If the JavaScript community have already done the work to compile ffmpeg to WASM then I can use it from Python too - on any platform that has a Python WASM runtime. - I want a safe sandbox for executing untrusted code - for example, I'd like to build a plugin system for one of my projects where the users of that project can execute code they find on the internet without fear of it 0wning their computer. Sandboxing Python scripts (and Sandboxing for most other languages) is notoriously hard to do safely. WASM offers a rock-solid, widely tested sandbox mechanism.
mastax 5y ago
Pretty impressed with the performance of the cranelift and singlepass backends. They've come a long way. I am wondering why the LLVM backend takes so long to compile the TiDb Wasm. Presumably it doesn't take >3 days to compile TiDb from source with llgo and rustc. Why would compiling it to Wasm first make it take way longer to compile than from source?
- syrusakbary 5y ago
  LLVM compilation times can be for sure improved further, although to be honest we haven't focused on it yet (as this long compilation times are more like an edge case atm). In general, compiling to Wasm gives you the universality over a chipset or OS. Imagine that you compile TiDB today to Wasm, tomorrow you will be able to run it in chipsets or platforms where it was not available today (RISC-V, for example), without the need of installing a toolchain to rebuild the binary... just with a small runtime like Wasmer.
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
ksec 5y ago
What am I suppose to compare it against? It is one thing that 2.2 is 5x or 10x faster than 1.0, but without some well known / understood figures; C, Java or LuaJIT. It is hard to judge the relative performance. I know a lot of these are not fair comparison, but ( as Benedict Evans likes to put it ), relevant comparison. As I would like to know the cost of abstraction and isolation.

98 points by wiqar 5y ago

Hi HN! Syrus here, from the Wasmer team. We have been working hard on this release that adds support for ARM64 and Apple M1 chipsets in Singlepass (our compiler, mostly used in Web3/Blockchain environments). In Wasmer we aim to make software universally available (regardless programming languages, operating systems or chipset used), by leveraging on WebAssembly. Let me know if you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer them!

tester756 5y ago
Hi I've got excited about WebAssembly and used it with C#'s Blazor but I feel like it moves incredibly slow, especially things like GC / DOM Access, etc. It feels like we're getting closer and closer to half of the decade How do you see it?
- syrusakbary 5y ago
  I think WebAssembly is going to play a key role in Universal Computing. In my impression, the pace for moving some Wasm specs forward could be improved, but there are big players that need to be aligned and that has a cost. On the other hand, the ecosystem is really picking up a good pace and there are new players and tools being launched everyday. I'm personally very excited to know where we are heading as a community!
stevemk14ebr 5y ago
Bumping no_std support up the priority queue would be extremely welcome.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Yes, I would really love to put this on the Precurser device.

hoten 5y ago

I see "an unexpected error has occured" on mobile chrome milliseconds after the article content renders (and is then hidden) This is across the entire site.

syrusakbary 5y ago
Thanks for the heads up... looking into it! EDIT: I did tested in Safari and Chrome (iOS) and things are working properly there. Do you have JS enabled? Could you provide more details that will help reproducing the issue? Thanks!
- hoten 5y ago
  It's working now.

fimdomeio 5y ago

Can someone explain me what's the connection between wasmer, web3 and blockchain?

eatonphil 5y ago
I was confused what you could possibly mean by that but then I read the opening paragraph: > The Wasmer 2.2 release features significant advancements shaping up to impact our Web3 and blockchain community in a big way. Wasmer is reintroducing Aarch64 compatibility for our Singlepass compiler. With the newly overhauled Singlepass, Web3 and blockchain developers can efficiently run Wasmer Runtime with Singepass on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The new release also fully supports the much anticipated Apple M1 processor. And since the rest of the post doesn't mention anything more, I share your curiosity.
- panick21_ 5y ago
  WASM is a technology that has good security and isolation. So some people try to use it as underlying technology for smart contracts. So the reality is, its just and WASM and lots of people trying to build stuff on WASM.
- maxmcd 5y ago
  Looks like some wasmer users (sponsors?) are crypto companies taking advantage of the isolation/sandboxing properties of wasm/wasmer. https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aspacemeshos+wasmer&type=code https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aspacemeshos+wasmer&type=co... https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acosmos+wasmer&type=code https://github.com/search?q=org%3Acosmos+wasmer&type=code
jadbox 5y ago
Several blockchains like NEAR are using WASM, but I could only find these resources about blockchains using Wasmer: https://wasmer.io/case-studies/confio https://wasmer.io/case-studies/confio https://cosmwasm.com/ https://cosmwasm.com/ "CosmWasm is supporting fourteen different Cosmos projects, including Terra, Regen Network, and Crypto.com"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Shadonototra 5y ago

I never understood the need of such stuff WASM only good for client side web browsers, anything is a pure waste of time and human resources

syrusakbary 5y ago
I have good news! Wasmer can also be run on the browser. Check out wasmer-js [1] [1] https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-js/ https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-js/
- Shadonototra 5y ago
  node-js? no thanks What's up with Rust people bloating everything?
  - n42 5y ago
    Do you want to have a conversation, or are you just here to complain?
stevemk14ebr 5y ago
Wasm is a sandbox first off. Any situation where you want to isolate a computation is an application suitable for wasm. Browser is just one instance of that
simonw 5y ago
WASM is exciting for so much more than browsers. I'm a Python developer. Two needs I have for WASM are: - I want to use libraries like ffmpeg without first figuring out how to compile them and talk to them through Python bindings. If the JavaScript community have already done the work to compile ffmpeg to WASM then I can use it from Python too - on any platform that has a Python WASM runtime. - I want a safe sandbox for executing untrusted code - for example, I'd like to build a plugin system for one of my projects where the users of that project can execute code they find on the internet without fear of it 0wning their computer. Sandboxing Python scripts (and Sandboxing for most other languages) is notoriously hard to do safely. WASM offers a rock-solid, widely tested sandbox mechanism.

mastax 5y ago

Pretty impressed with the performance of the cranelift and singlepass backends. They've come a long way. I am wondering why the LLVM backend takes so long to compile the TiDb Wasm. Presumably it doesn't take >3 days to compile TiDb from source with llgo and rustc. Why would compiling it to Wasm first make it take way longer to compile than from source?

syrusakbary 5y ago
LLVM compilation times can be for sure improved further, although to be honest we haven't focused on it yet (as this long compilation times are more like an edge case atm). In general, compiling to Wasm gives you the universality over a chipset or OS. Imagine that you compile TiDB today to Wasm, tomorrow you will be able to run it in chipsets or platforms where it was not available today (RISC-V, for example), without the need of installing a toolchain to rebuild the binary... just with a small runtime like Wasmer.

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

ksec 5y ago

What am I suppose to compare it against? It is one thing that 2.2 is 5x or 10x faster than 1.0, but without some well known / understood figures; C, Java or LuaJIT. It is hard to judge the relative performance. I know a lot of these are not fair comparison, but ( as Benedict Evans likes to put it ), relevant comparison. As I would like to know the cost of abstraction and isolation.