TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Chrome ships WebGPU

936 pointsby itsukaabout 2 years ago

54 comments

FL33TW00Dabout 2 years ago
This is very exciting! (I had suspected it would slip to 114)<p>WebGPU implementations are still pretty immature, but certainly enough to get started with. I&#x27;ve been implementing a Rust + WebGPU ML runtime for the past few months and have enjoyed writing WGSL.<p>I recently got a 250M parameter LLM running in the browser without much optimisation and it performs pretty well! (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;fleetwood___&#x2F;status&#x2F;1638469392794091520" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;fleetwood___&#x2F;status&#x2F;1638469392794091520</a>)<p>That said, matmuls are still pretty handicapped in the browser (especially considering the bounds checking enforced in the browser). From my benchmarking I&#x27;ve struggled to hit 50% of theoretical FLOPS, which is cut down to 30% when the bounds checking comes in. (Benchmarks here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FL33TW00D&#x2F;wgpu-mm">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FL33TW00D&#x2F;wgpu-mm</a>)<p>I look forward to accessing shader cores as they mentioned in the post.
评论 #35471362 未加载
评论 #35471009 未加载
评论 #35466979 未加载
评论 #35468239 未加载
评论 #35472645 未加载
评论 #35466713 未加载
评论 #35467457 未加载
评论 #35475090 未加载
评论 #35490700 未加载
Cianticabout 2 years ago
This is a comment from Aras Pranckevičius [1]:<p>&gt; WebGL was getting really old by now. I do wonder whether WebGPU is a bit late too though (e.g. right now Vulkan decides that PSOs maybe are not a great idea lol)<p>&gt; As in, WebGPU is very much a &quot;modern graphics API design&quot; as it was 8 years ago by now. Better late than never, but... What&#x27;s &quot;modern&quot; now seems to be moving towards like: bindless everything (like 3rd iteration of what &quot;bindless&quot; means), mesh shaders, raytracing, flexible pipeline state. All of which are not in WebGPU.<p>I&#x27;m not that versed on details, but would interesting to hear what are the advantages of this modern bindless way of doing things.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.gamedev.place&#x2F;@aras&#x2F;110151390138920647" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mastodon.gamedev.place&#x2F;@aras&#x2F;110151390138920647</a>
评论 #35466668 未加载
评论 #35466754 未加载
评论 #35468530 未加载
raphlinusabout 2 years ago
This is a huge milestone. It&#x27;s also part of a much larger journey. In my work on developing Vello, an advanced 2D renderer, I have come to believe WebGPU is a game changer. We&#x27;re going to have reasonably modern infrastructure that runs everywhere: web, Windows, mac, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android. You&#x27;re going to see textbooks(*), tutorials, benchmark suites, tons of sample code and projects to learn from.<p>WebGPU 1.0 is a lowest common denominator product. As &#x27;FL33TW00D points out, matrix multiplication performance is much lower than you&#x27;d hope from native. However, it is <i>possible</i> to run machine learning workloads, and getting that performance back is merely an engineering challenge. A few extensions are needed, in particular cooperative matrix multiply (also known as tensor cores, WMMA, or simd_matrix). That in turn depends on subgroups, which have some complex portability concerns[1].<p>Bindless is another thing everybody wants. The wgpu team is working on a native extension[2], which will inform web standardization as well. I am confident this will happen.<p>The future looks bright. If you are learning GPU, I now highly recommend WebGPU, as it lets you learn modern techniques (including compute), and those skills will transfer to native APIs including Vulkan, Metal, and D3D12.<p>Disclosure: I work at Google and have been involved in WebGPU development, but on a different team and as one who has been quite critical of aspects of WebGPU.<p>(*): If you&#x27;re writing a serious, high quality textbook on compute with WebGPU, then I will collaborate on a chapter on prefix sums &#x2F; scan.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gpuweb&#x2F;gpuweb&#x2F;issues&#x2F;3950">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gpuweb&#x2F;gpuweb&#x2F;issues&#x2F;3950</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.rs&#x2F;wgpu&#x2F;latest&#x2F;wgpu&#x2F;struct.Features.html#associatedconstant.TEXTURE_BINDING_ARRAY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.rs&#x2F;wgpu&#x2F;latest&#x2F;wgpu&#x2F;struct.Features.html#associ...</a>*
评论 #35479177 未加载
评论 #35470961 未加载
slimsagabout 2 years ago
This is very welcome and a long time coming!<p>If you&#x27;re eager to learn WebGPU, consider checking out Mach[0] which lets you develop with it natively using Zig today very easily. We aim to be a competitor-in-spirit to Unity&#x2F;Unreal&#x2F;Godot, but extremely modular. As part of that we have Mach core which just provides Window+Input+WebGPU and some ~19 standalone WebGPU examples[1].<p>Currently we only support native desktop platforms; but we&#x27;re working towards browser support. WebGPU is very nice because it lets us target desktop+wasm+mobile for truly-cross-platform games &amp; native applications.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hexops&#x2F;mach">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hexops&#x2F;mach</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hexops&#x2F;mach-examples&#x2F;tree&#x2F;main&#x2F;core">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hexops&#x2F;mach-examples&#x2F;tree&#x2F;main&#x2F;core</a>
评论 #35474990 未加载
评论 #35467244 未加载
评论 #35467293 未加载
teruakohatuabout 2 years ago
In case you confused this with webgl as I did:<p>&gt; WebGPU is a new API for the web, which exposes modern hardware capabilities and allows rendering and computation operations on a GPU, similar to Direct3D 12, Metal, and Vulkan. Unlike the WebGL family of APIs, WebGPU offers access to more advanced GPU features and provides first-class support for general computations on the GPU.
评论 #35465974 未加载
评论 #35467826 未加载
评论 #35492032 未加载
codedokodeabout 2 years ago
I remember when WebRTC was introduced, it was found that it became very popular and was used by almost every page. But closer inspection showed that its use was to get user&#x27;s IP address for better fingerprinting.<p>I predict that WebGL&#x2F;WebGPU will be mainly used for the same purposes. Nobody needs new fancy features, what people really need is more reliable fingerprinting (this is proven by number of uses of WebRTC for fingerprinting vs number of uses for communication).
评论 #35467619 未加载
评论 #35466872 未加载
评论 #35466804 未加载
评论 #35471459 未加载
评论 #35469183 未加载
tormehabout 2 years ago
This is HUGE news. Webgpu solves the incentives problem where all actors tries to lock you in to their graphics&#x2F;compute ecosystem by abstracting over them. It&#x27;s already the best way to code cross-platform graphics outside the browser. This release in Chrome ought to bring lots more developer mindshare to it, which is an awesome thing.
评论 #35466398 未加载
评论 #35466257 未加载
评论 #35466113 未加载
评论 #35466666 未加载
评论 #35468507 未加载
评论 #35492039 未加载
评论 #35466076 未加载
erk__about 2 years ago
I think Firefox aims to have this in Firefox 113, WebGPU was just enabled by default in nightly last week. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1746245" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=1746245</a>
评论 #35466029 未加载
评论 #35471332 未加载
codewizabout 2 years ago
&quot;This initial release of WebGPU is available on ChromeOS, macOS, and Windows.&quot;<p>Not yet available on Linux, perhaps because the Vulkan backend can&#x27;t be enabled yet: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.chromium.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;dawn&#x2F;issues&#x2F;detail?id=1593" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.chromium.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;dawn&#x2F;issues&#x2F;detail?id=1593</a>
评论 #35492047 未加载
bhoustonabout 2 years ago
And just 2 weeks ago I launched this WebGPU features and limits tracking website:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web3dsurvey.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web3dsurvey.com</a><p>It is modelled after the long defunct webglstats website.
评论 #35466215 未加载
评论 #35467811 未加载
hexhowellsabout 2 years ago
The MDN docs can also be found here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;API&#x2F;WebGPU_API" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;docs&#x2F;Web&#x2F;API&#x2F;WebGPU_API</a>
pier25about 2 years ago
Don&#x27;t get me wrong, this is supremely cool... but I wish the W3C and browsers solved more real world problems.<p>Just think how many JS kBs and CPU cycles would be saved globally if browsers could do data binding and mutate the dom (eg: morhpdom, vdom, etc) <i>natively</i>. And the emissions that come with it.<p>Edit:<p>For example, just consider how many billions of users are downloading and executing JS implementations of a VDOM every single day.
评论 #35468071 未加载
评论 #35468145 未加载
BulgarianIdiotabout 2 years ago
Now I want to see someone figure out a way to performantly distribute a trillion parameter model on a million smartphones looking at a web page.
评论 #35466154 未加载
TheAceOfHeartsabout 2 years ago
Can this be used to mine cryptocoins by malicious actors?
评论 #35465984 未加载
评论 #35466177 未加载
评论 #35466197 未加载
评论 #35465967 未加载
2OEH8eoCRo0about 2 years ago
I&#x27;m very curious about isolation. Nvidia doesn&#x27;t allow virtual GPUs on their consumer card drivers so this isolation feels like it can easily be abused. Will there be more support for vGPUs in the future? I hope Nvidia and others are pushed to include better isolation and vGPU support so that WebGPU doesn&#x27;t need to do all this security isolation themselves. Your browser could theoretically request a vGPU instance to work on.
评论 #35467762 未加载
markdog12about 2 years ago
Note that this has not shipped to stable, it&#x27;s currently in beta.<p>I read an unqualified &quot;shipped&quot; as &quot;shipped to stable&quot;, but maybe that&#x27;s just me.
0xDEFabout 2 years ago
Chrome and Firefox have supported WebGL since 2011 and WebAssembly since 2017.<p>What is the reason we don&#x27;t have at early-2010s quality AAA game experiences running in the browser?
评论 #35466900 未加载
评论 #35466544 未加载
评论 #35466453 未加载
评论 #35491952 未加载
评论 #35466491 未加载
评论 #35467701 未加载
评论 #35473388 未加载
Alifatiskabout 2 years ago
Soon, there will be no need to install softwares to the computer. A modern browser will cover it all.<p>What scares me is browsers getting bloated with all kinds of features while webapps getting bigger and bigger in size for no reason.<p>Note, I am all for this feature getting widely adopted.
评论 #35466298 未加载
评论 #35467161 未加载
评论 #35466394 未加载
评论 #35466295 未加载
评论 #35466437 未加载
topaz0about 2 years ago
I&#x27;d rather not have websites soak up my compute resources, thanks. They are already doing that many times too much for my taste.
评论 #35469610 未加载
评论 #35470469 未加载
ianpurtonabout 2 years ago
Is it practical to run machine learning algorithms in parallel with this?<p>I could imagine people loading a webpage to take part in a massive open source training exercise by donating their Gpu time.
评论 #35466411 未加载
评论 #35466227 未加载
AbuAssarabout 2 years ago
can this be used in fingerprinting?
评论 #35466030 未加载
评论 #35466079 未加载
评论 #35467118 未加载
评论 #35472220 未加载
HeckFeckabout 2 years ago
The browser truly is the new OS, for better or for worse.
评论 #35466183 未加载
评论 #35466407 未加载
phendrenad2about 2 years ago
Maybe I&#x27;m dumb but what does WebGPU get you <i>in reality</i> that WebGL doesn&#x27;t currently get you? I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re going to see browser games any time soon (because it&#x27;s trivial to just install a game and run it, and also the browser audio API sucks). And most visualizations on the web would be perfectly fine with plain old WebGL.
评论 #35476733 未加载
评论 #35475188 未加载
Jhstoabout 2 years ago
For anyone figuring out how to run webgpu on a remote computer (over webrtc) , see this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;periferia-labs&#x2F;laskin.live">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;periferia-labs&#x2F;laskin.live</a><p>Not sure if it works anymore (I made it 3 years ago), but will be interesting to see if there will be similar products for LLMs and so now.
waldrewsabout 2 years ago
How much easier does this make it for every ad and background animation to heat up my device and eat up battery time?
misterdataabout 2 years ago
This makes running larger machine learning models in the browser feasible - see e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;webonnx&#x2F;wonnx">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;webonnx&#x2F;wonnx</a> (I believe Microsoft&#x27;s ONNXRuntime.js will also soon gain a WebGPU back-end).
rock_hardabout 2 years ago
This is an exciting day! I have been dreaming about WebGPU to ship in Chrome&#x2F;Edge for as long as I can remember.<p>Now hoping Safari won’t take another decade to ship proper support…because until then there is only very limited use cases :(
j-pbabout 2 years ago
I lost all hope for WebGPU after they decided to roll their own ad-hoc shader language that kinda looks like, but is totally not rust.<p>At least with WebGL you had C.<p>Without SPIR-V support this spec is just another tire on the fire that is the modern web.
评论 #35466188 未加载
评论 #35466095 未加载
评论 #35466191 未加载
评论 #35466245 未加载
评论 #35466106 未加载
评论 #35466353 未加载
amrbabout 2 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webgpu.github.io&#x2F;webgpu-samples&#x2F;samples&#x2F;gameOfLife" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webgpu.github.io&#x2F;webgpu-samples&#x2F;samples&#x2F;gameOfLife</a>
grishkaabout 2 years ago
Can this be disabled when it is released?
评论 #35466382 未加载
amrbabout 2 years ago
Seriously I&#x27;m looking forward to running ML inference on the web!
评论 #35466195 未加载
Mindwipeabout 2 years ago
I wonder if you could utilise WebVR and this to build a reasonably performant VR application on a Mac.<p>Of course, that would require there being Quest drivers and software to get any traction...
macawfishabout 2 years ago
Still waiting on Linux support! I&#x27;d love to start working with this but gave up after a dozen+ tries to get it consistently running on Linux.
iamsanteriabout 2 years ago
Wow, this could be huge for enabling more efficient rendering of also more basic animations and effects on the web making it a smooth experience.
评论 #35469898 未加载
评论 #35466516 未加载
评论 #35467578 未加载
bitLabout 2 years ago
Is there a PyTorch port running on WebGPU somewhere? So that I could add local processing for ML pipelines into a webapp, bypassing cloud.
pjmlpabout 2 years ago
Get ready to rewrite all your shaders in WGSL.
评论 #35466734 未加载
评论 #35466765 未加载
yagiznizipliabout 2 years ago
I think it’s time to support WebGPU on Node.js too. Happy that it is finally on a stable version of Chromium.
tormehabout 2 years ago
Anyone know the reason Google created Dawn instead of going with Wgpu? Attachment to C++, or NIH syndrome?
评论 #35468723 未加载
评论 #35466422 未加载
victor96about 2 years ago
This is super exciting for us as we develop interactive browser UIs. I hope future versions of WebGPU will be backwards compatible to all those with Chrome 113.<p>We need an iOS like pace of updating for browsers!
评论 #35468894 未加载
switch007about 2 years ago
How does this help web fingerprinting &#x2F; Google’s revenue?
waynecochranabout 2 years ago
Is the camera capture support on mobile devices (perhaps loads video frames into texture map)? I assume this is what webxr is doing somehow?
hinellabout 2 years ago
LINUX IS NOT SUPPORTED, WHAT A DISGRACE
Alifatiskabout 2 years ago
How will this compare to Gpu.js?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gpu.rocks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gpu.rocks&#x2F;</a>
osigurdsonabout 2 years ago
Suppose you have a massive 3D model stored in the cloud, which weighs in at 100GB and requires most of the computation to be handled on the server side. In this scenario, would utilizing something like WebGPU be beneficial, given its primary responsibility for the final 2D projection?
评论 #35468215 未加载
评论 #35473371 未加载
infrawhispersabout 2 years ago
this is really nice. I may need to change the onnx backends in my demo here[1] from wasm to webgpu.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anansi.pages.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anansi.pages.dev&#x2F;</a>
notoranditabout 2 years ago
For Linux too? Not now!
ReptileManabout 2 years ago
If apple put it in safari - this is app store killer
评论 #35466768 未加载
评论 #35467451 未加载
评论 #35467793 未加载
notoranditabout 2 years ago
For Linux too?
bart3rabout 2 years ago
Does model-viewer support WebGPU ?
bart3rabout 2 years ago
Does model-viewer support WebGPU?
neoyagamiabout 2 years ago
I hope this is disable by default, the amount of fingerprinting it will generate kinda scares me.
puttycatabout 2 years ago
So, making it easier to directly harvest unsuspecting GPUs for mining?
senttoschoolabout 2 years ago
It&#x27;s good to know that Apple, MS, Firefox, and Google are all onboard. It&#x27;s great that browsers are finally taking advantage of the underlying hardware.<p>Next up for browsers should be NPUs such as Apple&#x27;s neural engine.
评论 #35466145 未加载
d--babout 2 years ago
Chrome _will_ ship WebGPU in the next update...<p>Current is 112, WebGPU is 113.<p>Seriously google, can&#x27;t you just wait until you actually ship the stuff before you say you shipped it...
评论 #35466153 未加载
评论 #35466185 未加载