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Saying HTML/CSS is "GPU-backed" gives the wrong impression. What's the point of saying a UI is GPU-backed (which usually means a UI hand-crafted using mesh, te

Saying HTML/CSS is "GPU-backed" gives the wrong impression. What's the point of saying a UI is GPU-backed (which usually means a UI hand-crafted using mesh, texture atlas, shaders, minimal draw calls, etc.) if it's also grouped together with one of the most bloated and inefficient means to output pixels on the screen (HTML/CSS). I love the web, not hating at all, but this is comparing apple and oranges.

dahart 4y ago
The point is that GPU-backed is faster than not, which is why your browser (and your OS) is doing all those things except maybe hand-crafted meshes (and I don’t agree that hand-crafted meshes is the usual definition of a GPU-backed UI). The GPU-backed UI does benefit from simple things like faster scrolling, especially on high DPI displays, in addition to speeding up the rendering of new pixels for HTML/CSS/SVG/image/video elements. The point is the browsers are actively trying to fix the inefficiency you’re referring to, and it might now be further along than you think. BTW, the GPU-backed browser UI and GPU-backed OS UI, these come with a bunch of things that someone’s hacked UI doesn’t, namely transparent software fallback when a GPU isn’t available, full compatibility with the UI spec, accessibility support, and tolerance for a wide range of GPUs. People making their own UIs directly almost never do these things (I’m guilty as charged), and as such their UIs are often some combination of more brittle, device dependent, and limited to a narrower audience.
- starburst 4y ago
  Sure hand-crafted mesh might push the envelop too much (I work in game dev) but GPU-Backed UI referred to a specialized form of UI. Have you read the article? They specifically mention how nowadays app are just a web page instead of being a GPU-Backed UI. Trying to push the narrative that HTML / CSS is somehow a GPU-Backed UI is almost comical. The browser is GPU-accelerated, it is not what anyone in the industry would consider a GPU-Backed UI.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Yes sir, I did in fact read the article. I used to work in game dev. After that I built a WebGL-based whiteboard a lot of people used. Now I help make GPUs. I think it’s great if you agree with the author. > The browser is GPU-accelerated, it is not what anyone in the industry would consider a GPU-Backed UI. Now this is a different argument than what you said above. I agree that browsers are what make it GPU-backed, not the HTML/CSS spec per se. But HTML/CSS is becoming effectively a GPU-backed UI in practice, by virtue of the fact that all the browsers use GPUs to render HTML & CSS. This is also true of the UIs provided by Windows and MacOS and Linux - the UI isn’t required to use the GPU, but the OSes will use GPUs for performance when possible. This is all anyone here actually means when they call HTML & CSS a GPU-backed UI. Is there a meaningful difference once there doesn’t exist a modern browser that doesn’t use a GPU to significantly render web apps? What I reject is the notion that “GPU-backed” is limited to more than what the words mean literally. If the implementation is using a GPU to render the UI elements, then it’s GPU backed. It doesn’t need to be hand-coded, or a one-off, or using shaders, or guaranteed by the UI spec.
    - starburst 4y ago
      > What I reject is the notion that “GPU-backed” is limited to more than what the words mean literally. This is exactly what I'm arguing against. We name stuff to represent something. The article very explicitly mention "GPU-Backed UI" as one of the alternative to app that are made with web tech (HTML / CSS). Because it is talking about a very specific way to build UI. And the name they choose is "GPU-Backed UI", which is what anyone would use too. But you are arguing that a Web Page / Browser / HTML / etc is "GPU Backed UI" and should be group together. But then we have the issue of how we name that type of UI that they are talking in the article which is very obviously something different than what a UI built using a browser would be.
      - dahart 4y ago
        Why do you say it’s a “name”; why are you assuming & asserting the words “GPU backed” are a term of art? Do you have any references to support this assertion? Why do you disagree that UI implemented with a GPU can be called “GPU backed”; aren’t overloaded meanings common enough to consider them possible and reasonable? What, exactly, is your definition of “GPU backed” then? Does it make room for the fact that OpenGL can run on a CPU? I would also argue that Scaleform on the Wii is GPU backed UI, for example. This thread is now hung on a gate-keeping technicality, and has lost the actual point, which is that, regardless of what you want to call it, html & css rendering have been getting faster due to the increasing use of GPUs, which is narrowing the gap between bespoke UIs and interfaces made with more standard toolkits.
- von_lohengramm 4y ago
  > GPU-backed is faster than not Not necessarily. I've seen far too many cases where GPU acceleration actually made things "slower." Throughput != latency

dahart 4y ago

The point is that GPU-backed is faster than not, which is why your browser (and your OS) is doing all those things except maybe hand-crafted meshes (and I don’t agree that hand-crafted meshes is the usual definition of a GPU-backed UI). The GPU-backed UI does benefit from simple things like faster scrolling, especially on high DPI displays, in addition to speeding up the rendering of new pixels for HTML/CSS/SVG/image/video elements. The point is the browsers are actively trying to fix the inefficiency you’re referring to, and it might now be further along than you think. BTW, the GPU-backed browser UI and GPU-backed OS UI, these come with a bunch of things that someone’s hacked UI doesn’t, namely transparent software fallback when a GPU isn’t available, full compatibility with the UI spec, accessibility support, and tolerance for a wide range of GPUs. People making their own UIs directly almost never do these things (I’m guilty as charged), and as such their UIs are often some combination of more brittle, device dependent, and limited to a narrower audience.

starburst 4y ago
Sure hand-crafted mesh might push the envelop too much (I work in game dev) but GPU-Backed UI referred to a specialized form of UI. Have you read the article? They specifically mention how nowadays app are just a web page instead of being a GPU-Backed UI. Trying to push the narrative that HTML / CSS is somehow a GPU-Backed UI is almost comical. The browser is GPU-accelerated, it is not what anyone in the industry would consider a GPU-Backed UI.
- dahart 4y ago
  Yes sir, I did in fact read the article. I used to work in game dev. After that I built a WebGL-based whiteboard a lot of people used. Now I help make GPUs. I think it’s great if you agree with the author. > The browser is GPU-accelerated, it is not what anyone in the industry would consider a GPU-Backed UI. Now this is a different argument than what you said above. I agree that browsers are what make it GPU-backed, not the HTML/CSS spec per se. But HTML/CSS is becoming effectively a GPU-backed UI in practice, by virtue of the fact that all the browsers use GPUs to render HTML & CSS. This is also true of the UIs provided by Windows and MacOS and Linux - the UI isn’t required to use the GPU, but the OSes will use GPUs for performance when possible. This is all anyone here actually means when they call HTML & CSS a GPU-backed UI. Is there a meaningful difference once there doesn’t exist a modern browser that doesn’t use a GPU to significantly render web apps? What I reject is the notion that “GPU-backed” is limited to more than what the words mean literally. If the implementation is using a GPU to render the UI elements, then it’s GPU backed. It doesn’t need to be hand-coded, or a one-off, or using shaders, or guaranteed by the UI spec.
  - starburst 4y ago
    > What I reject is the notion that “GPU-backed” is limited to more than what the words mean literally. This is exactly what I'm arguing against. We name stuff to represent something. The article very explicitly mention "GPU-Backed UI" as one of the alternative to app that are made with web tech (HTML / CSS). Because it is talking about a very specific way to build UI. And the name they choose is "GPU-Backed UI", which is what anyone would use too. But you are arguing that a Web Page / Browser / HTML / etc is "GPU Backed UI" and should be group together. But then we have the issue of how we name that type of UI that they are talking in the article which is very obviously something different than what a UI built using a browser would be.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Why do you say it’s a “name”; why are you assuming & asserting the words “GPU backed” are a term of art? Do you have any references to support this assertion? Why do you disagree that UI implemented with a GPU can be called “GPU backed”; aren’t overloaded meanings common enough to consider them possible and reasonable? What, exactly, is your definition of “GPU backed” then? Does it make room for the fact that OpenGL can run on a CPU? I would also argue that Scaleform on the Wii is GPU backed UI, for example. This thread is now hung on a gate-keeping technicality, and has lost the actual point, which is that, regardless of what you want to call it, html & css rendering have been getting faster due to the increasing use of GPUs, which is narrowing the gap between bespoke UIs and interfaces made with more standard toolkits.
von_lohengramm 4y ago
> GPU-backed is faster than not Not necessarily. I've seen far too many cases where GPU acceleration actually made things "slower." Throughput != latency