Research on WebAssembly Runtimes: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews 98 studies on WebAssembly runtimes, covering their design, testing, analysis, and applications across domains, and suggests future research directions.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive classification and analysis of WebAssembly runtime research, highlighting gaps and proposing future directions.

Findings

Characterized existing WebAssembly runtimes from design and application perspectives

Identified key challenges and research gaps in WebAssembly runtime development

Proposed future research directions for WebAssembly runtimes

Abstract

WebAssembly (abbreviated as Wasm) was initially introduced for the Web but quickly extended its reach into various domains beyond the Web. To create Wasm applications, developers can compile high-level programming languages into Wasm binaries or manually convert equivalent textual formats into Wasm binaries. Regardless of whether it is utilized within or outside the Web, the execution of Wasm binaries is supported by the Wasm runtime. Such a runtime provides a secure, memory-efficient, and sandboxed execution environment designed explicitly for Wasm applications. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of research on WebAssembly runtimes. It covers 98 articles on WebAssembly runtimes and characterizes existing studies from two different angles, including the "internal" research of Wasm runtimes(Wasm runtime design, testing, and analysis) and the "external" research(applying Wasm runtimes to various domains). This paper also proposes future research directions about WebAssembly runtimes.