What is webAssembly?

introduce

webAssembly is a set of binary machine language that runs on the browser. It has the characteristics of being small and fast.
You can C and C++ ( emscirpten ), Typescript ( AssemblyScript ), Rust ( WASM-Pack ) to write webAssembly .

webAssembly can run directly in the browser environment, or in the node environment.

timeline

• In 2015, the first release webAssembly implemented the game. Try the game
• In 2017, it has been
  Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and WebKit Supported. see more
• In 2019, the W3C made webAssembly the web standard.
• Now, the support status of major browsers , the latest proposals

Features

• Running in a sandbox ensures environment isolation, so it can be used for virtual machine implementation.
• Efficient, portable, and works on multiple platforms.

scenes to be used

browser environment

• toolkits for some languages
• game
• Peer-to-peer applications such as blockchain
• Music APP
• image processing
• Remote Desktop
• encryption
• local web server

non-browser environment

• server application
• Server-side sandbox environment
• hybird native app

see more

WebAssembly key concepts

In javascript of API .

• Module : The compiled binary, ending with the .wasm suffix.
• Memory : ArrayBuffer , variable size. WebAssembly Requires manual memory management. WebAssembly is to divide the memory according to the unit of "page", a "page" is 32B (often seen i32 is this size).
• Table : A typed array of variable size. Javascript wraps an object with an array-like structure, storing multiple function references.
• Instance : is an executable instance of WebAssembly.Module . The example contains all  WebAssembly export functions.

Read webAssembly .
By converting the .wasm file to .wat . View grammar

refer to

• webassembly.org
• WebAssembly API running in javascript
• How to contribute to webAssembly

Other articles

• Writing wasm via emscripten
• Writing wasm via AssemblyScript