Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 10th Dec 2008 19:49 UTC, submitted by BluenoseJake
Google has released an early version of Native Client, a framework designed to run portable x86 binaries inside a web browser - in a sandbox. Native Client also includes technologies that allow for easier communication between JavaScript and Native Client executables, which makes it possible for web applications to leverage native code when it comes to processor intensive tasks. This sounds eerily similar to Microsoft's ActiveX - one of the biggest security failures of the Windows operating system. Google insists, however, that Native Client is much, much more secure.
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2005-09-23
Correction to the OSNews summary: Google does not claim that Native Client is actually secure *at all*. In fact, they released it early as open source so it can even CLOSE to have a chance to be secure.
And as for Native Client itself, I think this idea is pretty ridiculous considering the gap between unmanaged and managed performance has only gotten considerably smaller over the last few years. Then there's the fact that developers would need to deploy multiple Native Client executables to support anything except stock PCs, and the fact that the performance gains of such a platform over Java, .NET/Silverlight, or Flash-based RIAs will not only be negligible, but it will continue to shrink as those systems gain more runtime performance enhancements. I just can't imagine a world where this would actually be beneficial to a normal web developer (although clearly this could be useful in medical and other latency-intensive/precise software).
Interesting project though and I'm glad they open sourced it right off.