Apple’s WebKit Team Proposes W3C Community Group: GPU on the Web

Dean Jackson, from Apple’s WebKit team:

Instead we need to evaluate and design a new web standard that provides a core set of required features, an API that can be implemented on a mix of platforms with different system graphics technologies, and the security and safety required to be exposed to the Web.

We also need to consider how GPUs can be used outside of the context of graphics and how the new standard can work in concert with other web technologies. The standard should expose the general-purpose computational functionality of modern GPUs. Its design should fit with established patterns of the Web, to make it easy for developers to adopt the technology. It needs to be able to work well with other critical emerging web standards like WebAssembly and WebVR. And most importantly, the standard should be developed in the open, allowing both industry experts and the broader web community to participate.

Exposing “the general-purpose computational functionality of modern GPUs” would be great for the web, because that’s where the Moore’s Law action is at these days. GPU performance is improving much faster than CPU performance.

★ Tuesday, 7 February 2017