Analysis of WebAssembly interpreter performance reveals that tail-calling interpreters outperform switch-based ones in native Rust but suffer significant slowdowns in WebAssembly runtimes like Wasmtime, V8, and SpiderMonkey. The author argues this is due to suboptimal compilation rather than inherent WebAssembly limitations, supported by comparative testing with the Wastrel runtime. The findings highlight current gaps in WebAssembly JIT optimization for certain code patterns.
Background
WebAssembly is a low-level binary format designed for high-performance execution in web browsers and other environments, often competing with native code. Tail-calling is an optimization technique that avoids stack buildup in recursive functions.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Apr 7, 2026 at 09:25 PM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10