Comparative Study of JavaScript and WebAssembly Derivatives in Browser Engines
Anastasios Stotoglou, Theodore H. Kaskalis · 2023
This research concerns the experimental implementation and comparison of algorithms that require high computational power in an emerging Web technology: WebAssembly. The increasing trend in web users has resulted in the greater use of browsers and the execution of increasingly demanding applications on browsers. Being the only dynamic web language, JavaScript is not able to handle these challenges. WebAssembly can be the solution to extending this ecosystem and improving its performance. In this paper, we compare the two aforementioned technologies and their derivatives (e.g. optimized forms) in order to examine their performance in multiple algorithmic problems, as well as their general advantages and disadvantages. Benchmarking experiments are divided into three categories of algorithms and are performed on different browsers. Through this research we can identify which browser is superior and in which class of problems, along with which WebAssembly derivatives yield better completion times. The results of the comparisons, based on our experimental findings, are presented in the form of tables and column charts, demonstrating the superior performance of hand-coded and optimized WebAssembly.