Because Wasm SIMD vectors store their type as `v128`, there is a mismatch between the more specific types Cranelift uses and Wasm SIMD. Because of this mismatch, Wasm SIMD translates to the default Cranelift type `I8X16`, causing issues when more specific type information is available (e.g. `I32x4`). To fix this, all incoming values to SIMD instructions are checked during translation (not runtime) and if necessary cast from `I8X16` to the appropriate type by functions like `optionally_bitcast_vector`, `pop1_with_bitcast` and `pop2_with_bitcast`. However, there are times when we must also cast to `I8X16` for outgoing values, as with `local.set` and `local.tee`.
There are other ways of resolving this (e.g., see adding a new vector type, https://github.com/bytecodealliance/cranelift/pull/1251) but we discussed staying with this casting approach in https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/issues/1147.
