WasmAssembly

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WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm, a contraction of “WebAssembly”, not an acronym, hence not using all-caps) is a safe, portable, low-level code format designed for efficient execution and compact representation. An assembly is a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose. In this show with the whimsical name WasmAssembly (get it?), Thomas Steiner, Developer Relations Engineer at Google, chats with experts from the community about the past, present, and future developments happening in the world of WebAssembly.

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Top 10 WasmAssembly Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best WasmAssembly episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to WasmAssembly for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite WasmAssembly episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

A promising feature: JavaScript Promise Integration with Francis McCabe - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

08/26/24 • 52 min

In this episode, Thomas Steiner chats with Francis McCabe from Google, who's the champion of the JavaScript Promise Integration and the Stack Switching proposals. They go from talking about synchronous assumptions in code over to discussing the JavaScript Promise Integration (JSPI) proposal and how to use it in practice, its performance implications, and how to use it in practice. After exploring a neat side effect of JSPI, namely lazy loading, the fall into the rabbit hole of comparing JSPI to the upcoming ES module integration of Wasm. Finally, Francis gives an overview of his other early stage Stack Switching proposal.

Resources: The Paper introducing Go! → https://goo.gle/3AiyCrY The JSPI proposal → https://goo.gle/3yxfkOM JSPI entering origin trial → https://goo.gle/4cjprok JSPI origin trial → https://goo.gle/4cmjxD4 Introducing JSPI → https://goo.gle/3YEPT90 The new JSPI API → https://goo.gle/4cie1RN The JSPI API change → https://goo.gle/4cie1RN Code example → https://goo.gle/3Arlq3P Stack-Switching Proposal for WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/3Ar2KRM The Vivant series → https://goo.gle/46Htp97

Squishy Wasm apps using Extism with Dylibso's Steve Manuel - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

11/18/24 • 51 min

Join host Thomas Steiner and Steve Manuel from Dylibso as they dive deep into the world of "squishy" Wasm applications. Steve discusses Dylibso's mission to make all software squishy, using Wasm to unlock flexibility and extensibility in software development. The episode explores Dylibso's projects like Extism and Chicory, and how Extism is being used in production with Wasm today. Come for the Extism logo, and stay for Tom's provocative questions on Extism's role in the WebAssembly ecosystem.

Resources:

Steve Manuel on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4fliZj5
Steve Manuel on X → https://goo.gle/3YPgfmW
Dylibso → https://goo.gle/48QR9sG
XTP → https://goo.gle/4fG11aL
Extism → https://goo.gle/3O564Ws
Observe → https://goo.gle/3UNW2N6
Chicory → https://goo.gle/40Jb0rG
Some Extism integrators → https://goo.gle/3O69Y1e
Extism logo → https://goo.gle/3Z1Qykh
Run an Extism plugin → https://goo.gle/4futaSr
Write an Extism plugin → https://goo.gle/4es7wwL
Extism plugins without officially supported plugin development kit → https://goo.gle/4eybRP4
WebAssembly Component Model → https://goo.gle/3AQzapo
Wasm Interface Type (WIT) → https://goo.gle/4fnXMFf
WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) → https://goo.gle/4duTBpv
Why Extism → https://goo.gle/3UOfXvu
Extism performance blog post → https://goo.gle/3Z4puBg
Beyond the HTTP API: WebAssembly and the Future of Systems Integration → https://goo.gle/4euyP9U
Enhance Wasm → https://goo.gle/4hMzEgV
Alone (survival show) → https://goo.gle/3CqP0Yo

WebGPU and wasi-gfx with renderlet

WasmAssembly

02/24/25 • 54 min

In this WasmAssembly podcast episode, Sean Isom and Mendy Berger from renderlet join host Thomas Steiner. Discover renderlet, a WebAssembly framework for writing graphics code that runs on any platform.

Resources:

Mendy Berger on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4b1y205
Sean Isom on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4hyO8Rb
Renderlet → https://goo.gle/3QsfjRy
renderlet Wasm I/O talk → https://goo.gle/42Z4nm4
renderlet Wasm I/O slides → https://goo.gle/4b7qCs1
Drawing to canvas in Emscripten → https://goo.gle/4i4Kazu
Multi-draw indirect GPU feature → https://goo.gle/3EH8zNg
Mesh shaders → https://goo.gle/40Y2Jyu
Work graphs → https://goo.gle/42X96ot
When in doubt, writeBuffer() → https://goo.gle/4jWjLWm
Fine grained control of memory proposal → https://goo.gle/4hHMvkj
Streams.wit → https://goo.gle/4gHkQhT
wasi-gfx talk: → https://goo.gle/4gU0tyo
wasi-gfx proposal → https://goo.gle/3QmYY0z
Web IDL → https://goo.gle/3X7Ea10
WIT → https://goo.gle/3CYzp2W
Webidl2wit → https://goo.gle/412whef
Mendy Berger on Mastodon → https://goo.gle/3D7XPXH
Sean Isom on X → https://goo.gle/41lY5vN

CG, WG, W3C, Deepti—Wasm standardization with Deepti Gandluri - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

05/23/24 • 59 min

In this episode, Tom interviews Deepti Gandluri, the Chair of the WebAssembly Community Group at the W3C. You will hear about the difference between the W3C WebAssembly Community Group and Working Group, how Wasm is standardized, how Deepti got into WebAssembly, and the challenges the WebAssembly team at Google faces being part of the Chrome team. Deepti also discusses her favorite Wasm features, how the Community Group might react to a browser-specific proposal, how WASI might work given browser security constraints, and new Wasm features she's excited about in the context of AI.

Resources: Episode 1 with Alon Zakai → https://goo.gle/4bpFxwV Deepti, Chair of the Community Group: → https://goo.gle/3yBtjmm Deepti, member of the Working Group → https://goo.gle/3K8NKJU WebAssembly Summit opening keynote → https://goo.gle/3WVyQP7 WebAssembly Community Group → https://goo.gle/3KaOrCM WebAssembly Working Group → https://goo.gle/3VbI48B WebAssembly W3C Process GitHub → https://goo.gle/3Kd5p3a TC39 process document → https://goo.gle/4bL3fno File System Access API → https://goo.gle/3UT5uOE Web Serial API → https://goo.gle/3WP92nq V8 Wasm source code in Chromium → https://goo.gle/4bNiUTa WebAssembly active proposals → https://goo.gle/44TBd72 WebAssembly inactive proposals → https://goo.gle/4btU6je Wasm feature detection proposal → https://goo.gle/3K9E95B JavaScript promise integration proposal → https://goo.gle/3yxfkOM JavaScript promise integration origin trial proposal → https://goo.gle/4aA8Mff WasmGC proposal → https://goo.gle/4asI6gI WasmGC → https://goo.gle/3WR7GZw WASI file system → https://goo.gle/3ylByD1 Stringref proposal → https://goo.gle/4awO68b Built-in Strings proposal → https://goo.gle/3wJ6Fbg Deepti's Google I/O talk → https://goo.gle/4boQOOk Relaxed SIMD proposal → https://goo.gle/4bNATss Half precision (FP16) proposal → https://goo.gle/3wA9rjd Memory64 proposal → https://goo.gle/3wA9rjd

From asm.js to Wasm with Emscripten creator Alon Zakai - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

04/25/24 • 40 min

Learn about some early WebAssembly history from one of the co-creators of Wasm, Alon Zakai! Follow along how Alon explains how we came from Native Client to asm.js and then finally to WebAssembly, and explore some interesting historical and present day sidetracks on the way.

Resources: Alon Zakai: Homepage → https://goo.gle/3vVaHgi / (has links to all the social profiles, too) LinkedIn profile → https://goo.gle/4cZDqRS

Native Client (NaCl) → https://goo.gle/3Q8oAi5 Portable NaCl (PNaCL) → https://goo.gle/4413xDK Compiling LLVM to JavaScript → https://goo.gle/4ay5Qke BananaBread demo → https://goo.gle/3xCWCEO asm.js → https://goo.gle/3Q5m10n asm.js presentation → https://goo.gle/445cz2F asm.js blog posts → https://goo.gle/3U4ZcuZ Emscripten and WebAssembly presentation → https://goo.gle/3W0SAQE Bringing the Web up to speed with WebAssembly paper → https://goo.gle/3JoDq0k Polywasm → https://goo.gle/4aE9JnV Qt apps compiled to asm.js → https://goo.gle/3UmXm9O Quake 3 Arena compiled to WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/3Ukt9s1

String built-ins with Mozilla's Ryan Hunt - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

08/05/24 • 60 min

In this episode, Thomas Steiner interviews Mozilla's Ryan Hunt, who's the champion of the string built-ins proposal. They first discuss Ryan's way into Mozilla and his role in the SpiderMonkey team, and then dive deep into the string built-ins proposal and some challenges and rabbit holes with it.

Resources: Ryan Hunt on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3Wxcfqb

SpiderMonkey blog → https://goo.gle/3Ww8ReX

WasmGC proposal → https://goo.gle/3Sz2CG7

Google Sheets WasmGC → https://goo.gle/4foOXv7

BrowserTech podcast episode with Row Zero → https://goo.gle/3SyfAUR

String Built-ins proposal → https://goo.gle/3LPXzxw

Potential other built-ins → https://goo.gle/4d445fL

Lin Clark's post on calls between JavaScript and WebAssembly being finally fast → https://goo.gle/3WNoeRV

The problems with `this` and operators like `===` → https://goo.gle/3WrWGA8

Using built-ins → https://goo.gle/3LONEIk

Polyfilling built-ins → https://goo.gle/4fpW4DJ

Scheme Wasm compiler → https://goo.gle/3Syg6lL

OCaml compiler → https://goo.gle/3A4Qs1B

Compact impact section proposal → https://goo.gle/4d5rBZQ

Compact impact section slides → https://goo.gle/4d7NU12

Memory64 proposal → https://goo.gle/4fqmghr

Seinfeld → https://goo.gle/3YyxpHb

Frasier → https://goo.gle/46CiRYT

Scrubs → https://goo.gle/3AiWhbu

Culver's restaurants → https://goo.gle/3LLRyBZ

Menards home improvement store → https://goo.gle/3WJpiWG

Ryan on GitHub → https://goo.gle/3A9BSG4

A deep dive into WebAssembly with Thomas Nattestad - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

10/28/24 • 50 min

In this episode, WasmAssembly host, Thomas Steiner, chats with Thomas Nattestad, Product Manager on the Google Chrome team. Learn about Chrome's investment in WebAssembly, WebAssembly caching and if there's a solution for cross-origin caching, canvas-rendered apps, and Thomas' take on WebAssembly DOM access and whether WebAssembly will replace JavaScript. Finally, the two talk about the Wasm ES module integration and what this means for bundlers.

Resources:

Thomas' BlinkOn 9 talk → https://goo.gle/4fkaDaU
Thomas' SFHTML5 talk "What, Why, and How to WebAssembly?": https://goo.gle/3NJw8WM (Sep 29, 2018)
Thomas wishing for VB6 for Wasm: https://goo.gle/3NCGZBY May 30, 2019)
VB.NET for Wasm: https://goo.gle/3AeH5N6 (Apr 13, 2019)
WebAssembly at Google WasmCon talk: https://goo.gle/4fl3Ai7
Flutter renderers → https://goo.gle/3AbAJy6
Qt for WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/3NGrTeG
Flutter support for WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/3BWT96a
Kotlin Compose Multiplatform → https://goo.gle/48D1jNv
Source phase imports proposal → https://goo.gle/3C2SvEo
WebAssembly ES module integration proposal → https://goo.gle/3C8wd3L
Angular ES module exploration → https://goo.gle/40ip4YM

Taking Fermyon's Spin for a spin with Thorsten Hans

WasmAssembly

01/10/25 • 49 min

Join Thomas Steiner as he chats with Thorsten Hans, Senior Cloud Advocate at Fermyon, about the exciting world of WebAssembly serverless functions and microservices with the Spin framework. Discover how Spin uses WebAssembly for lightning-fast cold starts and great portability, and explore the advantages of building microservice applications with Spin's diverse language support. Thorsten and Thomas also delve into the role of WebAssembly standards in shaping the future of cloud-native development. Tune in for this insightful conversation on the cutting edge of WebAssembly technology!

Resources:

Thorsten Hans' Fermyon blog posts → https://goo.gle/3ZCRJpL
Thorsten Hans on X → https://goo.gle/49xok4J
Thorsten Hans' blog → https://goo.gle/49xooBv
Thorsten Hans on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3Dh9frZ
Thorsten Hans on joining Fermyon → https://goo.gle/3PeO7pb
Till Schneidereit on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/49ApA73
Fermyon Spin → https://goo.gle/3ZQdTGb
Introducing Spin → https://goo.gle/3VBBeZI
Fermyon Spin on GitHub → https://goo.gle/3VEEymR
Building Spin Components in JavaScript → https://goo.gle/3ZCSZct
WasmAssembly episode "Squishy Wasm apps using Extism with Dylibso's Steve Manuel": → https://goo.gle/3VFcf7J
Spin JS/TS SDK → https://goo.gle/41zjrGw
ComponentizeJS → https://goo.gle/3OUNjFG
WASI HTTP → https://goo.gle/3MQvK8L
SpiderMonkey → https://goo.gle/4gIR1Ps
StarlingMonkey → https://goo.gle/3De6IyM
Spin Rust SDK → https://goo.gle/49zRznq
Spin SQLite storage → https://goo.gle/4iATEUo
Spin Serverless AI → https://goo.gle/49yWvJa

The WASI Revolution: Luke Wagner on WebAssembly's Past, Present, and Future - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

06/24/24 • 69 min

In this episode, Thomas Steiner interviews Luke Wagner, who works at Fastly. You’ll hear them chat about Luke’s time at Mozilla, how he remembers the Wasm launch, the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) and the component model, his thoughts on where WebAssembly’s future lies, and much more.

Resources: Luke Wagner's Wasm announcement blog post for Mozilla → https://goo.gle/4bdxyT4 The Wasm polyfill prototype → https://goo.gle/4bdiPHF The PLDI 2017 paper → https://goo.gle/4cvJpg7 A WebAssembly milestone → https://goo.gle/4bcK455 V8's Wasm announcement → https://goo.gle/3VHIanw Edge's Wasm announcement → https://goo.gle/4cbbEAX The WebAssembly browser preview → https://goo.gle/4c912mk The magic number and the version field → https://goo.gle/45D4hjj The WebAssembly post-MVP future blog pos → https://goo.gle/45zcapQ WebAssembly performance patterns →https://goo.gle/4ce8qwE API Concerns with Structured Clone for Wasm Modules → https://goo.gle/3XCXZOH Formal description of serializing and deserializing a Module → https://goo.gle/4bdNowH Don't allow IndexedDB serialization of WebAssembly.Module → https://goo.gle/4bj8OZo Normative: Support [Serializable] for WebAssembly.Module → https://goo.gle/3z9Wjlv Cache support → https://goo.gle/3zd7pX7 WebAssembly developers → https://goo.gle/4cd9v7Q WebAssembly — Caching to HTML5 IndexedDB → https://goo.gle/4c9KlqB The Lucet → https://goo.gle/4evkwTF The Lucet and Wasmtime teams join forces → https://goo.gle/45IbsH1 Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla → https://goo.gle/3VD6Yg6 What is WebAssembly? → https://goo.gle/3xtnGGK Lucet Takes WebAssembly Beyond the Browser → https://goo.gle/4b9akxi Wasmtime—A fast and secure runtime for WebAssembly → https://goo.gle/3xiVpTr How Lucet and Wasmtime make a stronger compiler, together → https://goo.gle/3RCtULo WASI 0.2: Unlocking WebAssembly’s Promise Outside the Browser → https://goo.gle/4eMwyID WASI 0.2 Launched → https://goo.gle/3z8qA4a WebAssembly System Interface → https://goo.gle/4cxRGjA WASI proposals → https://goo.gle/3VD7xXg WASI HTTP → https://goo.gle/3VAiJ75 The wit format → https://goo.gle/3VxVHO9 What color is your function? → https://goo.gle/3KSVG2n A stream of consciousness on the future of async in the Component Model → https://goo.gle/3XxJdIY Revolutions podcast → https://goo.gle/3xgPdve Luke Wagner on GitHub → https://goo.gle/3VyqgmP Luke Wagner on X → https://goo.gle/3KWz40U

#WebAssembly #Wasm #WASI

Speaker: Thomas Steiner

Exploring the Bytecode Alliance with Cosmonic's Bailey Hayes - WasmAssembly

WasmAssembly

09/30/24 • 55 min

In this episode, your host Thomas Steiner chats with Cosmonic's CTO and Bytecode Alliance technical steering committee and board member, Bailey Hayes, about the exciting world of WebAssembly at her company, and specifically at the Bytecode Alliance. After exploring how Cosmonic makes use of WASI for their wasmCloud product, they get into details about the Bytecode Alliance, the workstreams and projects hosted there, and how to work with it.

Resources:

Bailey Hayes on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/47xpA6M

Cosmonic's post welcoming Bailey → https://goo.gle/3ZzM1Gy

WebAssembly on the factory floor → https://goo.gle/3ZynB01

What is Cosmonic → https://goo.gle/4ethuhW

jco → https://goo.gle/4ecjdIC

jco example → https://goo.gle/4gwhBLu

SpiderMonkey → https://goo.gle/4gIR1Ps

WASI http → https://goo.gle/3MQvK8L

WasmAssembly episode with Ryan Hunt on string built-ins: https://goo.gle/3zs0Mk3

The various HTTP methods in WASI http → https://goo.gle/3Xxp9EX

WasmAssembly episode with Luke Wagner on WASI and the component model → https://goo.gle/3Xxryj8