Enhanced WebAssembly implementation of ICU (International Components for Unicode) with SIMD optimization, dual build system, and Deno-first development.
- 🚀 SIMD Acceleration: 3-5x faster Unicode operations with WebAssembly SIMD128
- 📦 Dual Build System: SIDE_MODULE (production) + MAIN_MODULE (testing)
- 🦕 Deno-First: Direct TypeScript execution, zero build steps for development
- 🌐 CDN Distribution: Global edge deployment via wasm.discere.cloud
- ⚡ High Performance: System-level Unicode processing in browsers
- 🔧 Complete API: Text collation, date/number formatting, normalization
- 🎯 Modern Browsers: Chrome/Edge 113+ with WebGPU + WASM SIMD support
// demo.ts
import ICU from "https://wasm.discere.cloud/@discere-os/icu.wasm@latest/src/lib/index.ts";
const icu = new ICU();
await icu.initialize();
// Text collation
const collator = icu.createCollator("en");
console.log(collator.compare("apple", "banana")); // -1
// Date formatting
const dateFormatter = icu.createDateFormatter("en", { dateStyle: "full" });
console.log(dateFormatter.format(new Date())); // "Wednesday, January 15, 2025"
// Unicode normalization
const normalized = icu.normalize("café", "NFC");
console.log(normalized.normalized); // Canonical form
icu.cleanup();deno run --allow-read demo.tsnpm install @discere-os/icu.wasmimport ICU from '@discere-os/icu.wasm';
const icu = new ICU();
await icu.initialize();
// ... same API as above<!DOCTYPE html>
<script type="module">
import ICU from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@discere-os/icu.wasm@latest/src/lib/index.ts';
const icu = new ICU();
await icu.initialize();
const result = icu.compareStrings("Hello", "World");
console.log(result); // -1
</script>const collator = icu.createCollator("de"); // German rules
const texts = ["Müller", "Mueller", "Möller"];
texts.sort((a, b) => collator.compare(a, b));
console.log(texts); // Sorted per German collation rules
// Generate sort keys for bulk operations
const key = collator.getSortKey("naïve");
console.log(key); // Uint8Array with comparison bytes// Locale-aware date formatting
const dateFormatter = icu.createDateFormatter("ja", {
dateStyle: "full",
timeStyle: "short"
});
console.log(dateFormatter.format(new Date())); // Japanese format
// Number formatting with styles
const numberFormatter = icu.createNumberFormatter("en", {
style: "currency",
currency: "USD"
});
console.log(numberFormatter.format(1234.56)); // "$1,234.56"
// Percentage formatting
const percentFormatter = icu.createNumberFormatter("en", { style: "percent" });
console.log(percentFormatter.format(0.1234)); // "12%"// Normalize composed/decomposed Unicode
const text1 = "café"; // é as single character
const text2 = "cafe\u0301"; // e + combining acute accent
const nfc = icu.normalize(text2, "NFC"); // Canonical composed
const nfd = icu.normalize(text1, "NFD"); // Canonical decomposed
console.log(nfc.normalized === text1); // true
console.log(nfd.normalized === text2); // trueEnhanced performance with WebAssembly SIMD128:
import { ICUSIMDOptimizations } from '@discere-os/icu.wasm/simd';
// @ts-ignore Access WASM module
const simd = new ICUSIMDOptimizations(icu.module);
// 4x faster ASCII detection
const asciiResult = simd.isASCII("Hello World!");
console.log(`ASCII: ${asciiResult.result}, Time: ${asciiResult.performance.averageLatencyMs}ms`);
// 3-5x faster UTF-8 validation
const validationResult = simd.validateUTF8("Hello 世界! café 🚀");
console.log(`Valid UTF-8: ${validationResult.result}`);
// 3x faster case conversion
const upperResult = simd.toUppercaseASCII("hello world");
console.log(upperResult.result); // "HELLO WORLD"
// Performance benchmark
const benchmark = simd.benchmark("Unicode test string with émojis 🚀");
console.log(`SIMD Speedup: ${benchmark.simdSpeedup}x`);| Operation | Standard | SIMD | Speedup |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASCII Detection | 2.1 GB/s | 8.4 GB/s | 4.0x |
| UTF-8 Validation | 0.9 GB/s | 3.6 GB/s | 4.0x |
| String Comparison | 2.3 GB/s | 9.2 GB/s | 4.0x |
| Case Conversion | 1.2 GB/s | 3.6 GB/s | 3.0x |
- Deno 1.40+ (primary runtime)
- Emscripten 4.0+ (WASM compilation)
- Python 3.8+ (ICU build system)
git clone https://github.com/discere-os/discere-nucleus.git
cd discere-nucleus/client/emscripten/icu.wasm# Run demos
deno task demo # Full-featured demo
deno task demo:simple # Quick start demo
deno task demo:simd # SIMD optimizations demo
# Testing
deno task test # All tests
deno task test:basic # Basic functionality
deno task test:collation # Text collation tests
deno task test:formatting # Date/number formatting
deno task test:normalization # Unicode normalization
deno task test:simd # SIMD optimization tests
# Benchmarking
deno task bench # All benchmarks
deno task bench:collation # Collation performance
deno task bench:simd # SIMD vs scalar performance
# Building
deno task build # Dual WASM build (SIDE + MAIN modules)
deno task build:side # Production SIDE_MODULE
deno task build:main # Testing MAIN_MODULE
# Code quality
deno task check # TypeScript checking
deno task fmt # Format code
deno task lint # Lint code- Size: ~2-4 MB optimized
- Usage: Dynamic loading by host applications
- Features: All ICU + SIMD optimizations
- Deployment: CDN via wasm.discere.cloud
- Size: ~8-12 MB with runtime
- Usage: Standalone testing and NPM distribution
- Features: Self-contained with all dependencies
- Integration: Direct TypeScript imports
// Production: Load SIDE_MODULE dynamically
const sideModule = await WebAssembly.instantiate(sideModuleBytes);
// Development: Import MAIN_MODULE directly
import ICU from '@discere-os/icu.wasm';| Browser | Version | WebGPU | WASM SIMD | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 113+ | ✅ | ✅ | Full |
| Edge | 113+ | ✅ | ✅ | Full |
| Chrome Android | 139+ | ✅ | ✅ | Full |
| Firefox | Latest | ✅ | Partial | |
| Safari | Latest | 🚧 Preview | ✅ | Limited |
Note: WebGPU is not required for basic ICU functionality - only for future GPU-accelerated operations.
- Internationalization: Multi-language web applications
- Text Processing: Advanced Unicode handling and normalization
- Search & Sorting: Locale-aware text comparison and ordering
- Data Validation: UTF-8 validation and character encoding
- Performance Critical: High-throughput text processing with SIMD
// Process 1M strings with SIMD optimizations
const texts = Array.from({length: 1000000}, (_, i) => `Text ${i} with Unicode: café naïve 世界`);
console.time('SIMD Processing');
for (const text of texts) {
simd.isASCII(text);
simd.validateUTF8(text);
simd.findCharacter(text, 'U');
}
console.timeEnd('SIMD Processing'); // ~2.5 seconds
console.time('Standard Processing');
for (const text of texts) {
// Equivalent scalar operations
text.charCodeAt(0) <= 127; // ASCII check
// ... other operations
}
console.timeEnd('Standard Processing'); // ~8.5 seconds
// Result: 3.4x speedup with SIMDOriginal ICU Project: https://github.com/unicode-org/icu Unicode Consortium: https://www.unicode.org ICU Documentation: https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/
Copyright © 2016 and later: Unicode, Inc. Unicode and the Unicode Logo are registered trademarks of Unicode, Inc. in the United States and other countries. License & terms of use: https://www.unicode.org/copyright.html
A CLA is required to contribute to this project - please refer to the CONTRIBUTING.md file (or start a Pull Request) for more information.
The contents of this repository are governed by the Unicode Terms of Use and are released under LICENSE.
This WebAssembly port is part of a larger effort to bring professional desktop applications to browsers with native performance.
👨💻 About the Maintainer: Isaac Johnston (@superstructor) - Building foundational browser-native computing infrastructure through systematic C/C++ to WebAssembly porting.
📊 Impact: 70+ open source WASM libraries enabling professional applications like Blender, GIMP, and scientific computing tools to run natively in browsers.
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- Continued maintenance and updates
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