What If the Runtime Was Portable Too? Self-Hosted Runtime Capabilities in Wasm

Explore how WebAssembly (Wasm) can achieve runtime-level portability through self-hosted runtime capabilities in this 11-minute lightning talk from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. Discover how current Wasm implementations successfully deliver code portability but still face limitations with runtime-specific features like live migration and resource accounting that remain tightly coupled to host implementations. Learn about an innovative approach using self-hosted Wasm runtimes that are themselves compiled to Wasm, enabling these capabilities to become runtime-independent and portable across different platforms. Examine how this design relocates system-level features into Wasm space, allowing operations like live migration to function across different runtimes without tight coupling by managing memory layouts and execution state within the Wasm environment. Understand the performance trade-offs involved in this approach and consider the broader implications for the WebAssembly ecosystem's future development.