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Explore a 23-minute conference talk from the WAW 2025 workshop that presents a Coq formalization for statically determining WebAssembly execution costs. John Shortt from the University of Ottawa demonstrates how to predict resource consumption before runtime, addressing a critical need for WebAssembly modules deployed in resource-sensitive environments like browsers, edge computing platforms, IoT devices, and smart contracts. The presentation builds on previous research to implement a formal specification in Coq that generates parametric execution cost bounds for WebAssembly functions. Learn about the methodology involving instruction count as a cost measure, basic blocks for non-looping code, extended basic blocks for loops, and loop cost analysis to produce general inequalities that can be solved through algebraic reduction, loop patterns, and SMT solvers. The research demonstrates how Wasm's formal specification enables practical reasoning about complex program properties across real-world applications.
