WebAssembly / WebAssembly/threads

Native WebAssembly threads

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question
Dominant language
WebAssembly
Stars
767
Forks
54
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

The current proposal has no mechanism for creating or joining threads, relying on the embedder to provide these operations. This allows for simple integration with SharedArrayBuffer, where a dedicated worker is used to create a new thread.

There is a drawback for WebAssembly, as a worker is a relatively heavyweight construct, and a native thread would be considerably more lean.

We are confident we'll want support for "native" WebAssembly threads eventually, so the question is whether the current proposal is sufficient for the initial implementation.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the current WebAssembly threads proposal described in this issue, including its use of SharedArrayBuffer and dedicated workers. Compare the proposal's embedder-provided thread creation and joining with the requested native-thread model. Done means reaching and documenting a decision about whether the current proposal is sufficient for the initial implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
wasm
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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