Bridging the Architecture Divide: How Hardware Limits Wasm, and How We Can Do Better – Tal Garfinkel

Bridging the Architecture Divide: How Hardware Limits Wasm, and How We Can Do Better – Tal Garfinkel, UC San Diego

Wasm relies on software based isolation to offer radically lower context switch overheads, startup times, and resource footprints, than VMs, Processes, and Containers. This has enabled many novel use cases, such as a new generation of high-concurrency, low-latency, edge computing platforms, that would not previously have been possible. Unfortunately, software based isolation faces some significant challenges ranging from performance overheads and scaling constraints, to vulnerability to Spectre attacks that limit its potential. In this session we will talk about the cause of these limitations, how current and emerging hardware features can be exploited to improve matters. And how small changes to the next generation of processors can take Wasm’s security, scalability, and performance to the next level.