Matt Butcher, CEO, Fermyon
DescriptionAs cloud developers, we are accustomed to working with virtual machines and containers. But there is an exciting new wave of cloud computing. WebAssembly, originally written for the browser, has the performance characteristics ideal for the next generation of serverless. And with the open source Spin project, you can build your first WebAssembly serverless function in two minutes.
For the last several years, two technologies have claimed the cloud compute space: Virtual machines (VMs) and containers. But there is a third class of cloud compute that has the ideal characteristics for underpinning serverless functions. And this technology is WebAssembly.
WebAssembly may have begun life in the browser, but like many promising technologies, it is useful well beyond. WebAssembly’s unique execution model and performance profile make it an excellent third wave of cloud computing. With lean memory and CPU usage, startup times under one millisecond, and a strong sandboxing model, WebAssembly is a great fit for the cloud.
The open source Spin project enables cloud native developers to go from a blinking cursor to a deployed serverless function in less than two minutes. We’ll look at the performance characteristics of this kind of serverless, and conclude with an exploration of what this means for the future of cloud computing.
Takeaways- WebAssembly is the next wave of cloud computing, alongside VMs and containers
- Serverless functions illustrate the ideal usage pattern for WebAssembly
- A developer can be up and running in as little as two minutes
#serverless #webassembly #wasm #cloud
