Table of Contents
🧠Memory Optimization
WebAssembly memory management is crucial for performance. Here are some proven strategies:
Linear Memory
Use WebAssembly's linear memory efficiently by pre-allocating memory and minimizing garbage collection overhead.
Packed Primitives
Use smaller data types like i8 or i16 when possible to reduce memory footprint.
Memory Bounds
Define memory limits and use fixed arrays for predictable memory layout.
// Rust example using wasmer
use wasmer::Memory;
let mut memory = Memory::new(store, MemoryType::new(1, Some(2), false))?;
let buffer = [0u8; 64 * 1024];
memory.write(0, &buffer)?;
📦 Code Size Reduction
Smaller code size improves load times and reduces memory usage:
- Enable optimization flags in your WebAssembly toolchain
- Use tree-shaking to remove unused code paths
- Apply dead code elimination during the build process
- Optimize for size using
--Ozoption
emcc -Oz --closure 1 -s EXPORTED_FUNCTIONS='[]'
// Example with clang optimizer
clang -O3 -flto -fwhole-program -Oz -Wl,-O3 -Wl,--gc-sections ...
🚀 Execution Optimization
These techniques significantly improve runtime performance:
SIMD Instructions
Use WebAssembly's SIMD extensions for parallel operations. Can speed up computations by 5-30x.
FunctionInlining
Inlining small functions reduces call overhead. Most effective for operations under 30 bytes.
🛠Recommended Tooling
wasm-opt
The official WebAssembly optimizer from Wasi.
wasm-merge
Combine multiple modules into single optimized units.
wasm-strip
Remove debugging and metadata for minimal distributions.