Communications of the ACM
The Secret Alliance That Could Give the Web a Massive Speed Boost
A joint project of Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Apple aims to create a new Internet platform combining the reach of the Web with the speed of software written to run natively on specific operating systems.
Credit: Google
WebAssembly is a joint project among Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Apple to create a new Internet platform that combines the reach of the Web with the speed of software written to run natively on specific operating systems.
WebAssembly, which is the result of the unification of Mozilla's Firefox team and Google's Chrome team, could result in the ability to browse the Web much faster, as well as providing a smoother experience when loading Web apps. The potential "programmer liberation" that could result from WebAssembly's success would help loosen the grip that Apple and Google have on the technology industry with their iOS and Android operating systems.
"I'm happy to report that we at Mozilla have started working with Chromium, Edge, and WebKit engineers on creating a new standard, WebAssembly," says project leader Luke Wagner.
At its most basic level, WebAssembly provides a different way to let browsers run software written in C, C++, or other languages. WebAssembly enables developers to create a program that is between traditional programming languages and machine code, which frees the browser from the work of creating the machine code while ensuring the software will run on any device with a browser regardless of the underlying hardware. WebAssembly's intermediate state also means programmers can work with their language of choice.
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