wgpu VS gpuweb

Oh look it's subgroup support landing last week: https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/pull/5301

And wgpu has been doing this for years. Things like descriptor indexing are not exposed to the web but used by Rust (mostly) engines on native.

https://wgpu.rs/

If they used https://wgpu.rs/ they would get directx and metal for free (:

IIRC it was delayed multiple times. I think the first intent to ship from chrome was before 100 but they kept pushing it off. Firefox still does not support it. There are projects like wgpu[0] that wrap provide a higher level API and I have used some projects using it with no issues. WFIW I didn't see any issue with OP's demo either.

[0] https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu

wgpu, the Rust WebGPU implementation is the bee's knees. https://wgpu.rs/ You can use it beyond the web.

There is anything like wgpu.rs for Zig? wgpu.rs is an abstraction on top of Vulkan, Metal, DirectX, etc...

People keep spreading this incredibly misleading statement, and yours is even more misleading (suggesting Apple opposed a 'GPU WASM')

By all accounts, Apple's /only/ stance was that if WebGPU used SPIR-V it would be a non-starter for them, due to ongoing legal issues between Apple and Khronos.

Apple actually proposed WebHLSL in collaboration with Microsoft, to have HLSL be the standard.

Mozilla employee's stance[0] was that SPIRV was too low level, did not fit with the goals of WebGPU portability and security, and expressed concern that Khronos may add functionality to SPIRV they cannot support in WebGPU like raytracing instructions .. 'So we'd always be on the verge of forking SPIR-V in some way.'

It was also noted by many people that even if a bytecode format was used, it would still have to be translated to the target (HLSL/DXIL, MSL, etc.) in almost the same way a text format would.

Nobody proposed a 'GPU WASM equivalent' or an alternative bytecode format.

The hard truth is that shader compilation is a fucking nightmare, people do not realize how bad it is across the different native APIs. SPIR-V is good, but it doesn't solve that - and presents other challenges if you are a web browser API. Vulkan and SPIRV are not the golden goose many make them out to be.

[0] https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/847#issuecomment-642...

Yes it is still a bit new. WebGPU is not finished and is still being worked on: https://webgpu.io/

WebGPU currently doesn't support the "bindless" resource access model (see: https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/380).

The "max number of sampled texture per shader stage" is a runtime device limit, and the minimal value for that seems to be 16. So texture atlasses are still a thing in WebGPU.

There's even an implementation under discussion to have the dp4a instruction added to WebGPU (https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/2677)