
WebGPU Shading Language - throwaway34241
https://gpuweb.github.io/gpuweb/wgsl.html
======
datahipster
Kudos to Google for moving this along! A few weeks, the HN community picked up
[0, 1] on a presentation [2] about the Tint shading language, a WebGPU shading
language prototype. It's great to see them formalize their prototype into a
draft spec.

Thank you to those who are working hard on bringing WebGPU to the masses!

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22316777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22316777)
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22351285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22351285)
[2]:
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qHhFq0GJtY_59rNjpiHU...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qHhFq0GJtY_59rNjpiHU
--JW4bW4Ji3zWei-gM6cabs/edit)

------
throwaway34241
Some context: browser vendors are working on a successor to WebGL, and there's
been a debate over what shading language to use.

A text based language would be easier for beginners (since they wouldn't need
to install a separate shader compiler) and would avoid sites that need dynamic
shaders having to download and run a shader compiler in the browser.

Using SPIR-V bytecode would benefit from a large amount of work put into an
existing standard and an open source compiler ecosystem that many companies
are already using.

It looks like a decision has been made to accept a text based language, but
one that is defined based on SPIR-V semantics and is easily convertible back
and forth from SPIR-V. This seems like a great trade off since if it works out
it should have the main advantages of both approaches.

~~~
ArtWomb
Thanks for posting ;)

Just curious if anyone has actually gotten the WebGPU bits to run? Getting a
device context, executing commands. Currently on CrOS. Able to install vulkan,
rust-wasm, and wgpu. But then I just get initialization errors. WebGL 2.0
Compute works when enabled in Chrome 79. My interest is in creating web gpu
grids for scientific computing

