Overview

Concepts

WebAssembly encodes a low-level, assembly-like programming language. This language is structured around the following concepts.

Values

WebAssembly provides only four basic number types. These are integers and IEEE 754-2019 numbers, each in 32 and 64 bit width. 32 bit integers also serve as Booleans and as memory addresses. The usual operations on these types are available, including the full matrix of conversions between them. There is no distinction between signed and unsigned integer types. Instead, integers are interpreted by respective operations as either unsigned or signed in two’s complement representation.

In addition to these basic number types, there is a single 128 bit wide vector type representing different types of packed data. The supported representations are 4 32-bit, or 2 64-bit IEEE 754-2019 numbers, or different widths of packed integer values, specifically 2 64-bit integers, 4 32-bit integers, 8 16-bit integers, or 16 8-bit integers.

Finally, values can consist of opaque references that represent pointers towards different sorts of entities. Unlike with other types, their size or representation is not observable.

Instructions

The computational model of WebAssembly is based on a stack machine. Code consists of sequences of instructions that are executed in order. Instructions manipulate values on an implicit operand stack [1] and fall into two main categories. Simple instructions perform basic operations on data. They pop arguments from the operand stack and push results back to it. Control instructions alter control flow. Control flow is structured, meaning it is expressed with well-nested constructs such as blocks, loops, and conditionals. Branches can only target such constructs.

Traps

Under some conditions, certain instructions may produce a trap, which immediately aborts execution. Traps cannot be handled by WebAssembly code, but are reported to the outside environment, where they typically can be caught.

Functions

Code is organized into separate functions. Each function takes a sequence of values as parameters and returns a sequence of values as results. Functions can call each other, including recursively, resulting in an implicit call stack that cannot be accessed directly. Functions may also declare mutable local variables that are usable as virtual registers.

Tables

A table is an array of opaque values of a particular reference type. It allows programs to select such values indirectly through a dynamic index operand. Thereby, for example, a program can call functions indirectly through a dynamic index into a table. This allows emulating function pointers by way of table indices.

Linear Memory

A linear memory is a contiguous, mutable array of raw bytes. Such a memory is created with an initial size but can be grown dynamically. A program can load and store values from/to a linear memory at any byte address (including unaligned). Integer loads and stores can specify a storage size which is smaller than the size of the respective value type. A trap occurs if an access is not within the bounds of the current memory size.

Modules

A WebAssembly binary takes the form of a module that contains definitions for functions, tables, and linear memories, as well as mutable or immutable global variables. Definitions can also be imported, specifying a module/name pair and a suitable type. Each definition can optionally be exported under one or more names. In addition to definitions, modules can define initialization data for their memories or tables that takes the form of segments copied to given offsets. They can also define a start function that is automatically executed.

Embedder

A WebAssembly implementation will typically be embedded into a host environment. This environment defines how loading of modules is initiated, how imports are provided (including host-side definitions), and how exports can be accessed. However, the details of any particular embedding are beyond the scope of this specification, and will instead be provided by complementary, environment-specific API definitions.

[1]

In practice, implementations need not maintain an actual operand stack. Instead, the stack can be viewed as a set of anonymous registers that are implicitly referenced by instructions. The type system ensures that the stack height, and thus any referenced register, is always known statically.

Semantic Phases

Conceptually, the semantics of WebAssembly is divided into three phases. For each part of the language, the specification specifies each of them.

Decoding

WebAssembly modules are distributed in a binary format. Decoding processes that format and converts it into an internal representation of a module. In this specification, this representation is modelled by abstract syntax, but a real implementation could compile directly to machine code instead.

Validation

A decoded module has to be valid. Validation checks a number of well-formedness conditions to guarantee that the module is meaningful and safe. In particular, it performs type checking of functions and the instruction sequences in their bodies, ensuring for example that the operand stack is used consistently.

Execution

Finally, a valid module can be executed. Execution can be further divided into two phases:

Instantiation. A module instance is the dynamic representation of a module, complete with its own state and execution stack. Instantiation executes the module body itself, given definitions for all its imports. It initializes globals, memories and tables and invokes the module’s start function if defined. It returns the instances of the module’s exports.

Invocation. Once instantiated, further WebAssembly computations can be initiated by invoking an exported function on a module instance. Given the required arguments, that executes the respective function and returns its results.

Instantiation and invocation are operations within the embedding environment.