POSE: Phase I: Towards a WebAssembly Research Ecosystem

This project is funded by Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) which seeks to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. WebAssembly (Wasm for short), is a new, portable compilation target for the Web that has sparked a revolution in how web applications are built.

Since its appearance in major browsers in 2017, Wasm has brought a new, powerful capability to the Web platform and begun expanding rapidly in Edge computing, Internet of Things (IoT) contexts, and embedded systems. Despite this momentum, the Wasm research community lacks shared infrastructure. This project identifies key missing pieces of research infrastructure related tools and artifacts, such as good benchmarks, that need an open source ecosystem to flourish.

The project’s impacts are an open source ecosystem centered around Wasm research with broader impacts of accelerating Wasm development and standardization and increasing the platform's usefulness to researchers. The project’s novelties lie in the planning and development of a Wasm Research Center, including determining of the governance structure, developing partnerships and funding agreements, establishing a collaborative model for groups of researchers, and scoping the infrastructure and tools that the ecosystem maintains.

Key to the success of this effort to establish a WebAssembly open-source ecosystem is outreach to researchers and industry partners to determine the scope and capabilities of needed tools and benchmarks to advance the state of Wasm research. An important aspect of this outreach is regular contact with the Wasm Worldwide Web Consortium Community Group (CG), a functioning industrial standards body that has successfully developed the standard and test suite.

This project supplements the CG with an additional set of ecosystems supporting research around Wasm. Specific broader impacts of this work include: improving the security and performance of applications, advancing software assurance through mechanized proofs, supporting a solid Edge Computing landscape, advancing the Web platform through additional features, increasing the range and diversity of supported languages, and filling the pipeline of talent and expertise in virtual machines.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.