Tensorflow.js available on WebAssembly backend 🔥

YASHINTS.DEV

Tensorflow is Google’s machine learning library which was launched on 2015. The web version (Tensorflow.js) was released last year, using a combination of JavaScript and WebGL. Note, in this instance WebGL is not being used for 3D graphics, instead the GPU is being used for high performance mathematics. This blog post announces the WebAssembly port of Tensorflow, which has performance comparable to WebGL (which is quite an achievement).

WebAssembly hasn’t grabbed JavaScript developers

INFOWORLD.COM

The State of JavaScript 2019 survey has just been published, providing some fascinating insights into JavaScript trends and developer sentiment. Of the 21,717 respondents, 1,444 have used WebAssembly, that’s approximately 7%. This figure is low enough for the tech press to declare a lack of interest in WebAssembly from JavaScript developers. Personally I think 7% is quite high. I also wonder what this figure would look like in an equivalent survey of Rust developers, which would clearly be a much more appropriate measure of interest!

WebAssembly as a Platform for Abstraction

MICHAELFBRYAN.COM

This newsletter has linked to quite a few articles describing how WebAssembly is being used as a sandboxed and secure runtime for blockchain, serverless and various other applications. However, this is the first article I’ve seen that actually demonstrated how to implement a WebAssembly embedding. This epic (27 minute read!) blog post demonstrates how to embed Wasmer in order to create a secure plugin architecture.

nes-rust

GITHUB.COM

We’ve already seen quite a few emulators written in various languages running on WebAssembly (I’ve written one myself). However, this one adds an extra dimension, this Rust-based NES emulator has remote multiplay support with WebRTC.