A decade in the making, WebAssembly (Wasm) has been attracting greater attention within the cloud-native software community, given the overall expansion of automated industrial systems and the benefits of scalability and flexibility. Portability is becoming increasingly important for applications as more connected systems with smaller-footprint edge devices are becoming commonplace.

Initially developed for web browsers to address the limitations of JavaScript, WebAssembly has found its way into everything from cloud-native applications to the Amazon Fire TV and, more recently, tiny edge devices like Sony Midokura cameras and sensors. 

Recently, ARC Advisory Group published a new white paper that looks at the immense potential WebAssembly has to bring these software development benefits to industrial companies.

Authored by analyst Harry Forbes, the white paper specifically highlights how WebAssembly provides portable executable code that can run on a wide variety of hardware platforms, scaling from the cloud down to extremely small and constrained devices. The white paper also features Atym, a software company with a WebAssembly-based solution that enables developers to develop, deploy, and manage containerized applications for billions of resource-constrained edge devices.

Developers of industrial software are interested in WebAssembly for these same reasons, according to the white paper, The Attraction of WebAssembly for Embedded Industrial Software.

In addition to its immense potential to enable resource-constrained industrial devices to be deployed, managed, and maintained using modern cloud-native software methods that have previously been impossible, breakthrough approaches today can extend container technology to hardware that can't support Docker, much less Linux.

Born in the browser, Wasm has enormous potential to revolutionize software development and deployment for embedded industrial systems. Unlike traditional containerization technologies like Docker, Wasm-based application containers do not require Linux as a foundation and are portable across any silicon architecture, including MCU-based devices with as little as 1MB of memory.

Applications can be programmed in different languages (e.g., C, Rust, Golang) and executed on devices in isolated containers, providing greater development flexibility, security, and IP protection, and individual containers can be fractionally updated on devices without requiring a reboot or impacting the overall code base.

"Benefits include significantly reduced development complexity and cost, improved security and manageability, and simplified ecosystem collaboration – especially when implementing new technologies like on-device AI/ML," Forbes writes.

"Small is the new big," said Jason Shepherd, CEO of Atym. "In doing so, we utilize the core Open Container Initiative (OCI) principles and accommodate typical CI/CD workflows. While we make it possible to run containerized apps on MCU-based devices due to a footprint of less than 256KB of memory, this footprint being over 1,000 x lighter than what Linux with Docker requires also allows a great alternative to Docker for conserving memory resources on more capable hardware such as IoT gateways, networking gear, and set-top boxes."

Shepherd has been a pioneer in IoT, edge computing, and hybrid edge and cloud computing for many years, having established Dell's first IoT offering and led several projects with the Linux Foundation, including the introduction of EdgeXFoundry, the Zephyr Project, and more.

Managed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WebAssembly is built as an open standard, ensuring that its evolution is guided by the needs of developers, organizations, and the broader tech ecosystem rather than being driven by proprietary interests. This openness promotes interoperability, reduces barriers to entry, and empowers innovation across diverse fields. Atym's WebAssembly foundation is established by the open-source Ocre project in the Linux Foundation, which the company seeded with code in August 2024.

In 2015, major suppliers of web browsers, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, collaborated to standardize WebAssembly as a common executable format that could run within any browser. Today, all major web browsers support WebAssembly.

In the past 4-5 years, Wasm has attracted significant developer attention for applications outside of the browser. It has been proven to improve the portability of applications across sprawling, hybrid, multi-cloud environments, delivering the ability to deploy and run applications anywhere a Wasm runtime can operate.

Many industries are now considering additional areas that can benefit from  WebAssembly. This new white paper provides a pathway to understanding precisely how developers can get started applying the technology to embedded software.

ARC and Atym are presenting a webinar on March 19, hosted by ARC Advisory's Patrick Arnold and the co-founders of Atym, which will feature more about the technology, benefits, and use cases in the embedded space, and industry collaboration among leading companies, including Bosch, Emerson, and Siemens.