[Cs-dev] WebAssembly

Date	2015-06-18 11:43
From	Stephen Kyne
Subject	[Cs-dev] WebAssembly
Attachments	None None
	Hi all, I was browsing the /r/programming sub reddit and saw mention of this today. It sounds like great news. https://github.com/WebAssembly/ https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ It seems like it could solve a lot of problems for the web based cross platform Csound in that it would be a common standard between all browsers. That's mobile and desktop as well. Both the EMScripten and PNacl teams are involved and EMScripten will be outputting WebAssembly via some additional commands in the future. I guess that means it wouldn't take much work for the Csound build to adapt to it? Something I noted from the article above also... "It’s crucial that wasm and asm stay equivalent for a decent interval, to support polyfilling of wasm support via JS. This remains crucial even as JS and asm.js evolve to sprout shared memory threads and SIMD support" That would pretty much allow Csound to take full advantage of the CPU although I'm not sure if SIMD is used much currently? Stephen

Date	2015-06-18 13:23
From	Michael Gogins
Subject	Re: [Cs-dev] WebAssembly
Attachments	None None
	Yes. this is very interesting, and I will follow it. Let us be very aware that efforts to create a universal platform for computing (of which this is a late variation) face two centrifugal forces: (a) the evils of human nature (theft, hacking, spying, etc.). which have caused browsers to set up sandboxing and to forbid cross domain requests; and (b) the intentions of corporations to set up proprietary walled gardens for the sake of profit even at the cost of community and integration. Corporations ALSO have a vested interest in a fully accessible platform for advertising and sales, and that is what has preserved Web standards to date. So there has been an alliance of convenience between corporate marketers and "keep the Web free and open" hacker types like us. This has worked pretty well so far, but the shifting battle front between hackers and Web standards will shift again. In other words I expect if Web assembly takes off, then some people will want to unlock the sandbox in it for good reasons (to run music pieces from a PC using resources from the Web), and others will want to unlock the sandbox for bad reasons (to steal your credit card and to spy on you). As an example of how the sandbox has been unlocked, look at the fs module and changes to the File object in Node.js and JW.js, and permissions createable in the app manifest. Similar permissions are available in the Chromium Embedded Framework. Thanks for the info, Mike ----------------------------------------------------- Michael Gogins Irreducible Productions http://michaelgogins.tumblr.com Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Stephen Kyne <stevek@outlook.ie> wrote: Hi all, I was browsing the /r/programming sub reddit and saw mention of this today. It sounds like great news. https://github.com/WebAssembly/ https://brendaneich.com/2015/06/from-asm-js-to-webassembly/ It seems like it could solve a lot of problems for the web based cross platform Csound in that it would be a common standard between all browsers. That's mobile and desktop as well. Both the EMScripten and PNacl teams are involved and EMScripten will be outputting WebAssembly via some additional commands in the future. I guess that means it wouldn't take much work for the Csound build to adapt to it? Something I noted from the article above also... "It’s crucial that wasm and asm stay equivalent for a decent interval, to support polyfilling of wasm support via JS. This remains crucial even as JS and asm.js evolve to sprout shared memory threads and SIMD support" That would pretty much allow Csound to take full advantage of the CPU although I'm not sure if SIMD is used much currently? Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Csound-devel mailing list Csound-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/csound-devel

Date	2015-06-18 15:26
From	Victor Lazzarini
Subject	Re: [Cs-dev] WebAssembly
	We don’t do SIMD by hand. I tested a few things in x86_64 and got no compute time advantage, so I didn’t waste more time with it. ======================== Dr Victor Lazzarini Dean of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Ireland Tel: 00 353 7086936 Fax: 00 353 1 7086952 > On 18 Jun 2015, at 11:43, Stephen Kyne wrote: > > That would pretty much allow Csound to take full advantage of the CPU although I'm not sure if SIMD is used much currently? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Csound-devel mailing list Csound-devel@lists.sourceforge.net