summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffhomepage
path: root/wasm.html.markdown
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorDean Shaff <dshaff@swin.edu.au>2019-07-16 11:51:18 +1000
committerDean Shaff <dshaff@swin.edu.au>2019-07-16 11:51:18 +1000
commitf62b48d9283fd04738a1fd664c4b92b6891b4e04 (patch)
treef10fb442c7e45f7f4e5c36a8ac2a531967d4cdea /wasm.html.markdown
parent84cb0e88995b6d2f04a119cc25a695a33e1cbf9f (diff)
added my WebAssembly tutorial
Diffstat (limited to 'wasm.html.markdown')
-rw-r--r--wasm.html.markdown227
1 files changed, 227 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/wasm.html.markdown b/wasm.html.markdown
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..a5c00d7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/wasm.html.markdown
@@ -0,0 +1,227 @@
+---
+language: WebAssembly
+filename: learn-wasm.wast
+contributors:
+ - ["Dean Shaff", "http://dean-shaff.github.io"]
+---
+
+```webassembly
+;; learn-wasm.wast
+
+(module
+ ;; In WebAssembly, everything is included in a module. Moreover, everything
+ ;; can be expressed as an s-expression. Alternatively, there is the
+ ;; "stack machine" syntax, but that is not compatible with Binaryen
+ ;; intermediate representation (IR) syntax.
+
+ ;; The Binaryen IR format is *mostly* compatible with WebAssembly text format.
+ ;; There are some small differences:
+ ;; local_set -> local.set
+ ;; local_get -> local.get
+
+ ;; We have to enclose code in functions
+
+ ;; Data Types
+ (func $data_types
+ ;; WebAssembly has only four types:
+ ;; i32 - 32 bit integer
+ ;; i64 - 64 bit integer (not supported in JavaScript)
+ ;; f32 - 32 bit floating point
+ ;; f64 - 64 bit floating point
+
+ ;; We can declare local variables with the "local" keyword
+ ;; We have to declare all variables before we start doing anything
+ ;; inside the function
+
+ (local $int_32 i32)
+ (local $int_64 i64)
+ (local $float_32 f32)
+ (local $float_64 f64)
+
+ ;; These values remain uninitialized.
+ ;; To set them to a value, we can use <type>.const:
+
+ (local.set $int_32 (i32.const 16))
+ (local.set $int_32 (i64.const 128))
+ (local.set $float_32 (f32.const 3.14))
+ (local.set $float_64 (f64.const 1.28))
+ )
+
+ ;; Basic operations
+ (func $basic_operations
+
+ ;; In WebAssembly, everything is an s-expression, including
+ ;; doing math, or getting the value of some variable
+
+ (local $add_result i32)
+ (local $mult_result f64)
+
+ (local.set $add_result (i32.add (i32.const 2) (i32.const 4)))
+ ;; the value of add_result is now 6!
+
+ ;; We have to use the right data type for each operation:
+ ;; (local.set $mult_result (f32.mul (f32.const 2.0) (f32.const 4.0))) ;; WRONG! mult_result is f64!
+ (local.set $mult_result (f64.mul (f64.const 2.0) (f64.const 4.0))) ;; WRONG! mult_result is f64!
+
+ ;; WebAssembly has some builtin operations, like basic math and bitshifting.
+ ;; Notably, it does not have built in trigonometric functions.
+ ;; In order to get access to these functions, we have to either
+ ;; - implement them ourselves (not recommended)
+ ;; - import them from elsewhere (later on)
+ )
+
+ ;; Functions
+ ;; We specify arguments with the `param` keyword, and specify return values
+ ;; with the `result` keyword
+ ;; The current value on the stack is the return value of a function
+
+ ;; We can call other functions we've defined with the `call` keyword
+
+ (func $get_16 (result i32)
+ (i32.const 16)
+ )
+
+ (func $add (param $param0 i32) (param $param1 i32) (result i32)
+ (i32.add
+ (local.get $param0)
+ (local.get $param1)
+ )
+ )
+
+ (func $double_16 (result i32)
+ (i32.mul
+ (i32.const 2)
+ (call $get_16))
+ )
+
+ ;; Up until now, we haven't be able to print anything out, nor do we have
+ ;; access to higher level math functions (pow, exp, or trig functions).
+ ;; Moreover, we haven't been able to use any of the WASM functions in Javascript!
+ ;; The way we get those functions into WebAssembly
+ ;; looks different whether we're in a Node.js or browser environment.
+
+ ;; If we're in Node.js we have to do two steps. First we have to convert the
+ ;; WASM text representation into actual webassembly. If we're using Binyaren,
+ ;; we can do that with a command like the following:
+
+ ;; wasm-as learn-wasm.wast -o learn-wasm.wasm
+
+ ;; We can apply Binaryen optimizations to that file with a command like the
+ ;; following:
+
+ ;; wasm-opt learn-wasm.wasm -o learn-wasm.opt.wasm -O3 --rse
+
+ ;; With our compiled WebAssembly, we can now load it into Node.js:
+ ;; const fs = require('fs')
+ ;; const instantiate = async function (inFilePath, _importObject) {
+ ;; var importObject = {
+ ;; console: {
+ ;; log: (x) => console.log(x),
+ ;; },
+ ;; math: {
+ ;; cos: (x) => Math.cos(x),
+ ;; }
+ ;; }
+ ;; importObject = Object.assign(importObject, _importObject)
+ ;;
+ ;; var buffer = fs.readFileSync(inFilePath)
+ ;; var module = await WebAssembly.compile(buffer)
+ ;; var instance = await WebAssembly.instantiate(module, importObject)
+ ;; return instance.exports
+ ;; }
+ ;;
+ ;; const main = function () {
+ ;; var wasmExports = await instantiate('learn-wasm.wasm')
+ ;; wasmExports.print_args(1, 0)
+ ;; }
+
+ ;; The following snippet gets the functions from the importObject we defined
+ ;; in the JavaScript instantiate async function, and then exports a function
+ ;; "print_args" that we can call from Node.js
+
+ (import "console" "log" (func $print_i32 (param i32)))
+ (import "math" "cos" (func $cos (param f64) (result f64)))
+
+ (func $print_args (param $arg0 i32) (param $arg1 i32)
+ (call $print_i32 (local.get $arg0))
+ (call $print_i32 (local.get $arg1))
+ )
+ (export "print_args" (func $print_args))
+
+ ;; Loading in data from WebAssembly memory.
+ ;; Say that we want to apply the cosine function to a Javascript array.
+ ;; We need to be able to access the allocated array, and iterate through it.
+ ;; This example will modify the input array inplace.
+ ;; f64.load and f64.store expect the location of a number in memory *in bytes*.
+ ;; If we want to access the 3rd element of an array, we have to pass something
+ ;; like (i32.mul (i32.const 8) (i32.const 2)) to the f64.store function.
+
+ ;; In JavaScript, we would call `apply_cos64` as follows
+ ;; (using the instantiate function from earlier):
+ ;;
+ ;; const main = function () {
+ ;; var wasm = await instantiate('learn-wasm.wasm')
+ ;; var n = 100
+ ;; const memory = new Float64Array(wasm.memory.buffer, 0, n)
+ ;; for (var i=0; i<n; i++) {
+ ;; memory[i] = i;
+ ;; }
+ ;; wasm.apply_cos64(n)
+ ;; }
+ ;;
+ ;; This function will not work if we allocate a Float32Array on the JavaScript
+ ;; side.
+
+ (memory (export "memory") 100)
+
+ (func $apply_cos64 (param $array_length i32)
+ ;; declare the loop counter
+ (local $idx i32)
+ ;; declare the counter that will allow us to access memory
+ (local $idx_bytes i32)
+ ;; constant expressing the number of bytes in a f64 number.
+ (local $bytes_per_double i32)
+
+ ;; declare a variable for storing the value loaded from memory
+ (local $temp_f64 f64)
+
+ (local.set $idx (i32.const 0))
+ (local.set $idx_bytes (i32.const 0)) ;; not entirely necessary
+ (local.set $bytes_per_double (i32.const 8))
+
+ (block
+ (loop
+ ;; this sets idx_bytes to bytes offset of the value we're interested in.
+ (local.set $idx_bytes (i32.mul (local.get $idx) (local.get $bytes_per_double)))
+
+ ;; get the value of the array from memory:
+ (local.set $temp_f64 (f64.load (local.get $idx_bytes)))
+
+ ;; now apply the cosine function:
+ (local.set $temp_64 (call $cos (local.get $temp_64)))
+
+ ;; now store the result at the same location in memory:
+ (f64.store
+ (local.get $idx_bytes)
+ (local.get $temp_64))
+
+ ;; do it all in one step instead
+ (f64.store
+ (local.get $idx_bytes)
+ (call $cos
+ (f64.load
+ (local.get $idx_bytes))))
+
+ ;; increment the loop counter
+ (local.set $idx (i32.add (local.get $idx) (i32.const 1)))
+
+ ;; stop the loop if the loop counter is equal the array length
+ (br_if 1 (i32.eq (local.get $idx) (local.get $array_length)))
+ (br 0)
+ )
+ )
+ )
+ (export "apply_cos64" (func $apply_cos64))
+)
+
+```