W3C publishes design for WebGPU

The World Wide Web Consortium has the first public working drafts for WebGPU and the WebGPU Shading Language. The publication is another step towards widespread adoption of the web standard for graphics computation acceleration.

With the publications for WebGPU and the Shading Language for the technology, the W3C lists what it has set so far for the coming web standard. The working group for WebGPU describes matters such as security, privacy, buffers and rendering.

WebGPU is a standard for the acceleration of graphing calculations with GPUs for web applications. The standard is being developed by the GPU for the Web Community Group of the W3C, which includes developers from Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft and Google. The proposed standard therefore has broad support and the potential to work on many platforms.

The API is to replace WebGL and has its origins in proposals for WebGL Next technology from Google, Khronos and Mozilla, and WebMetal from Apple. The final WebGPU api uses technology from Vulkan, Direct3D 12 and Metal, unlike WebGL, which is based on OpenGL. OpenGL never became the success that its initiators hoped for, due to lack of support, bugs and developers’ preference for Direct3D, among other things. As a Next Generation OpenGL Initiative, Vulkan had to change this with better performance, among other things.