An Investigative Study of WebAssembly Performance in Cloud-to-Edge

Developing an application architecture that can fully utilize the resources available is essential for developers as cloud-to-edge computing keeps evolving. With its ability to operate on multiple architectures without interfering with the development process, WebAssembly has become a highly significant solution. This makes it easy for programmers to spread applications across various computer systems. To make the WebAssembly binaries work, a runtime is required. In this paper, the tests are run using the existing Wasmtime runtime and the SightGlass benchmark suite. We compare the cycle counts for the benchmarks' compilation, instantiation, and execution phases using performance counters during the evaluation stage. These tests have shown that WebAssembly is a highly effective tool that can help developers create applications that are both efficient and effective. Using WebAssembly, developers can create applications that can adapt to changing computing environments, making it possible to take full advantage of cloud-to-edge computing. Our experimental study investigated the performance of the wasmtime runtime on X86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures. Through the evaluation, we gained a valuable analysis of Wasm's performance characteristics. By examining architecture-specific outcomes, we demonstrated its capacity to fulfill the demands of a cross-architecture cloud-to-edge application framework.