WebGPU and WSL in Safari

Post by chungus_khan » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #155

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They created OpenCL and supported OpenGL (ES) as the only graphics API on their platforms for years, but now they have dumped both open standards in favour of their own proprietary ones.

Actually they created Quickdraw 3D, and only adopted OpenGL as the NeXT team came onboard. Although they created and gave OpenCL 1.0 to Khronos, they were not happy with the path that Khronos was taking it and their support basically stagnated on OpenCL 1.0. As side note Google is yet to support OpenCL on Android, instead just like they did with their Android Java, they decided to create their own flavour, Renderscri…

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

tutanchamun wrote: post #162

pjmlp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they created Quickdraw 3D, and only adopted OpenGL as the NeXT team came onboard. Although they created and gave OpenCL 1.0 to Khronos, they were not happy with the path that Khronos was taking it and their support basically stagnated on OpenCL 1.0. As side note Google is yet to support OpenCL on Android, instead just like they did with their Android Java, they decided to create their own flavour, Renderscri…

> [...] Metal is one year older than Vulkan [...] Is it really though? Vulkan is based on AMD Mantle which AMD gave to Khronos. AMD Mantle (2013) predates Apple Metal (2014).

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #171

pjmlp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they created Quickdraw 3D, and only adopted OpenGL as the NeXT team came onboard. Although they created and gave OpenCL 1.0 to Khronos, they were not happy with the path that Khronos was taking it and their support basically stagnated on OpenCL 1.0. As side note Google is yet to support OpenCL on Android, instead just like they did with their Android Java, they decided to create their own flavour, Renderscri…

> Apple understands the value of providing nice frameworks and debugging tools to go along an API. You should have a look to pwcalton's Twitter feed if you want a quick overview of how nice the tools in questions are. Getting a kernel panic when running Xcode doesn't sound like “nice debugging tools” to me…

Post by pcwalton » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 12:41 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #127

atq2119 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a somewhat ill-informed comment, since you shouldn't be thinking of something like Vulkan as a platform API in the first place. Vulkan (and most other APIs, e.g. OpenGL) is an almost entirely platform-independent API targeting modern GPUs. There are a small number of platform-dependent entry points for window system interaction and such like, but their surface area is a very small percentage of the overall…

And it shows, given the lack of tooling versus what platform APIs offer out of the box. Instead of a modern API, frameworks, 3D model format, IDE support for debugging shaders, we get plain old C, extensions creep, and go search yourself for basic feature like displaying text or loading textures. Hardly an improvement on OpenGL status quo.

Post by atq2119 » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #136

atq2119 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that the developers shaping the WSL specification are experts is questionable given that the actual experts in shading languages -- i.e., the implementers building GPU hardware -- are looking at SPIR-V and seem to be pretty frustrated by the NIH syndrome of the web developer community here.

Do you have some evidence for this assertion? Because Apple happens to make its own GPUs and shading language... a shading language that also runs on other people's GPUs. Seems like relevant expertise to me.