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Yuck. So now there's 3 of them. What's wrong with GLSL? HLSL? Somebody link that xkcd about competing standards. But seriously, why do they reinvent the wheel?
by bruce343434 5y ago
Yuck. So now there's 3 of them. What's wrong with GLSL? HLSL? Somebody link that xkcd about competing standards.
But seriously, why do they reinvent the wheel? Either make javascript work on the GPU (because that's the language of the web, just like C++ and Cuda go hand in hand), or just stick with HLSL.
- kvark 5y agoApple has tried to collaborate with Microsoft on making HLSL viable for the Web and standardizing it. IIRC, we figured that we can't accept HLSL as is anyway, and we'd have to develop a flavor of it for the Web, in which case the point about using an existing language becomes moot.
- rektide 5y agoControl-flow oriented languages like JavaScript are not a good fit for GPUs. That's the accepted belief, at least. Allegedly GLSL and HLSL do not come with enough protections / guarantees for anyone to have felt comfortable porting them to the web. That rules them out cleanly. Also, these are both fairly legacy technologies, both predating Vulkan by a good bit more than a decade. WebGPU at it's core is a remake of Vulkan for the web. Then there's a shading language that works with this base. My understanding is this is a far more competent, capable means of setting up & orchestrating work, so that it can happen & flow effectively on GPUs. Doing less than WebGPU sounds supremely unappealing.