Shared Memory & Atomics
Explore the use of SharedArrayBuffer and atomic operations for high-performance concurrent data access between WASM and JS.
Concurrency & Shared Memory
When building high-performance applications, especially with WebAssembly, you often need to perform tasks concurrently. This means running parts of your code in parallel, perhaps across different threads.
For these concurrent tasks to work together efficiently, they often need to access and modify the same data. This is where shared memory comes in.
Why Not Just ArrayBuffer?
You might already know about ArrayBuffer for handling raw binary data in JavaScript. However, a standard ArrayBuffer cannot be directly shared between different execution contexts (like the main thread and a Web Worker, or between JavaScript and a WebAssembly thread).
Each context would get its own copy of the data, which is inefficient and complicated to synchronize for frequent updates.