Give your Web AppSuperpowers with WebAssembly and Friends

May 11, 2016 - Brad Nelson / @flagxor

Pushing the Envelop in 2016

• Average website (2.39MB) = Doom (2.39MB)
• Moore's Law
• Mobile

Pushing the Envelop on the Web

• JavaScript performance is inconsistent and plateauing
• The DOM is inherently slow
• Both require browsers to infer and guess

Virtues of the Web

• Open
• Portable
• Secure
• Ephemeral
• What's missing?

Native Code

• Runs really fast
  • Close to the metal
  • Low power
• Has access to "native" APIs
• All the languages: C++, Java, Python...
• Threads + Shared Memory
• SIMD

What can Native Code do?

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Android → ChromeOS

But I'm a JavaScript developer...

• C/C++ libraries
• Codecs
• Widgets

How to bring Native Code to the Web?

Technology Graveyard

• ActiveX
• NPAPI
• Java
• Flash

How to make it safe?

Native Client

• Run machine code, safely
• Portable variant
• Fast
  • 80-95% of Raw Native
  • SIMD support
  • Threads and shared memory
• Shared Libraries
• JIT Support
• Mature and powerful, but Chrome only

Jargon

• Native Client → NaCl
• Portable Native Client → PNaCl

What makes NaCl safe?

• Two Sandboxes!
  • Outer Process Sandbox
  • Inner Static Verification Sandbox

Process Sandbox (NaCl)

Software Fault Isolation

(NaCl Inner Sandbox)

• Verify before run
• Disassemble everything
• Limit instructions
• Restrict what code can execute (Control Flow Integrity)
• Restrict what data can be accessed (Data Integrity)
• Restrict I/O interface

Software Fault Isolation

(NaCl Inner Sandbox)

How to make it run everywhere (sorta)?

Emscripten / Asm.js

• C/C++ compiled to JavaScript
• Use ArrayBuffer as a C/C++ heap
• High percentage of Raw Native
• Faster in some browsers than others
• Synchronous access to JS + the DOM
• Portable, but missing some features

Jargon

• Emscripten → [Put into] script [become]
• Asm.js → Assembly Language as JavaScript

JavaScript "Type Declarations"

• float64 → +(xxx)
• float32 → Math.fround(xxx)
• int32 → (xxx)|0
• uint32 → (xxx)>>>0
• TypedArray → pointers

function MyAsmModule(stdlib, foreign, heap) {
  "use asm";
  var HEAPU8 = new Uint8Array(heap);
  function strlen(ptr) {
    ptr = ptr|0;
    var curr = 0;
    curr = ptr;
    while (HEAP8[curr]|0 != 0) {
      curr = (curr + 1)|0;
    }
    return (curr - ptr)|0;
  }
  ...

All together now!

Web Assembly

• Cross-browser binary Native Code
• Open W3C Collaboration
• LLVM backend upstream
• Start with Asm.js level features
• Roadmap for all the things!
  • Threads + Shared Memory
  • SIMD
  • Hardware Fault Interception
  • Memory mapping
  • Dynamic Linking / Shared Libraries
  • JIT Support

Jargon

• Web Assembly → Wasm

(func $aligned (result i32)
  (local i32 i32 i32)
  (set_local 0 (i32.const 10))
  (label
    (loop
      (if
        (i32.eq (get_local 0) (i32.const 0))
        (break 0)
      )
      (set_local 2
        (i32.mul (get_local 0) (i32.const 4)))
      (i32.store (get_local 2) (get_local 0))
...

Make friends with JavaScript!

• SIMD → Single Instruction, Multiple Data
• Expose SSE/AVX/Neon to the Web
• 128-bit SIMD Types
• SIMD.js - TC39 Stage 3

function vec4average(a) {
  var a_length = a.length;
  var sum = SIMD.Float32x4.splat(0.0);
  for (var i = 0; i < a_length; i += 4) {
    sum = SIMD.Float32x4.add(
        sum, SIMD.Float32x4.load(a, i));
  }
  return SIMD.div(sum, SIMD.Float32x4.splat(n));
}

SharedArrayBuffers

• Shared Memory for JavaScript
• Web Workers see a shared ArrayBuffer
• Atomics + Futexes
• Gateway to Wasm shared memory
• TC39 Stage 2

Threadsin JavaScript!?!

• Use all the cores!
• postMessage is SLOW!
• Fast synchronization
• Blocking on background threads!
• Different concurrency models
• C/C++ code expects threads

Challenges

• Concurrency is hard - but you know that already
• What about the main thread?
• Shared Memory + Web APIS
• Will it change how Web apps work?

Expect more from the Web Platform

• Vibrant platforms let developers innovate!

Questions?

WebAssembly: http://webassembly.github.io

Emscripten: http://emscripten.org

NaCl SDK: http://gonacl.com

Slides: https://github.com/flagxor/appsworld-2016