WebAssembly for Edge-Cloud Computing

Identifier:  TFM:1637

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFM1637

Authors:  Funk, Marlon

Abstract:
In recent years, serverless computing has arisen as popular solution for building and deploying applications in cloud environments. One of the leading platform in this field is Apache OpenWhisk, which offers a severless framework for executing event-driven functions in response to various triggers. While having recognized efficiency, its underlying technologies are still evolving to fulfill constantly increasing demands. The runtime environment for function execution is a key aspect of severless computing. As a binary instruction format for virtual machines Wasm has gained attention for its portability and performance. The aim of this work is to investigate and evalutate the use of WebAssembly (Wasm) as an alternative to the current Docker containerization approach. The actual substitution was implemented before, however several questions regarding the performance differences between Wasm and Docker remain unanswered. After conducting several benchmarks, the superiority of Wasm regarding latency and capacity can be confirmed. Additionally, it shows fewer outlier occurrences compared to Docker and Wasm causes less strain on memory and CPU usage.