Continuing WebAssembly with Effect Handlers

Explore an 18-minute video presentation from OOPSLA2 2023 introducing WasmFX, an extension to WebAssembly that incorporates effect handlers for non-local control flow features. Learn how this minimal addition of three main instructions for creating, suspending, and resuming continuations provides a universal target for compiling languages with async/await, generators/iterators, and other advanced control flow mechanisms. Discover the formal specification and soundness proof for WasmFX, as well as its implementation in the Wasm reference interpreter and a prototype extension for Wasmtime. Gain insights into the type-safe design of WasmFX, its alignment with Wasm's principles, and the promising preliminary performance results. Understand the potential impact of this extension on compiler development for languages targeting WebAssembly and the future plans for native implementation.