WebAssembly Working Group

The mission of the WebAssembly Working Group is to standardize a size- and load-time-efficient format and execution environment, allowing compilation to the web with consistent behavior across a variety of implementations.
 
The scope of the WebAssembly Working Group comprises addressing the need for native-performance code on the Web in applications ranging from 3D games to speech recognition to codecs—and in any other contexts in which a common mechanism for enabling high-performance code is relevant—by providing a standardized portable, size-, and load-time-efficient format and execution environment that attempts to maximize performance and interoperate gracefully with JavaScript and the Web, while ensuring security and consistent behavior across a variety of implementations.
 
Since the inception of the Web, various technologies have been developed to allow “native” applications on the Web. Techniques such as user consent with digital signatures and Virtual Machines with different capabilities than JavaScript failed to be robust in the face of increasingly high security requirements. Later efforts like Native Client, which featured robust security, failed to achieve cross-browser adoption. Cross-compilation to JavaScript using Emscripten, especially using the machine-optimization subset called asm.js, achieved some degree of success. However, consistent cross-browser performance, shared memory threads, and other machine features have proved elusive.
 
The WebAssembly format and execution environment address the shortcomings of those previous efforts.