Progress Being Made On New "WebGPU" Web Graphics API

There continues to be progress made on the new Apple/W3C backed web graphics API dubbed "WebGPU" that has the backing of major stakeholders.

Separate from the work being done by The Khronos Group on "WebGL-Next" there is the "WebGPU" initiative being organized by the W3C.

A Phoronix reader pointed out to us the latest meeting minutes for those interested in some lengthy reading this weekend.

Among recent work is Apple working on designing a "secure shading language" and Mozilla working on a lot of code. Mozilla has made progress on a Direct3D 12 back-end as well as OpenGL support.

There is a Servo-based WebGPU prototype via this GitHub repository. That prototype of WebGPU in turn is backed by the Vulkan and Direct3D 12 APIs.

Still an open question is whether the shading language will ultimately be represented by JavaScript or instead if they will target WebAssembly (WASM) or both as the source languages.

It will be interesting to see what comes of these web graphics APIs in 2018.