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.
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
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.