Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't it be possible to build a WebGL backend for OpenXLA? Edit: There seems to be some progress on a WASM backend for OpenXLA here: https://github.com/openxla/iree/issues/8327 and a proposed WebML working group at W3C: https://www.w3.org/2023/03/proposed-webmachinelearning-chart... that references OpenXLA
Making each webapp target & optimize ML for every possible device target sounds terrible. The purpose of MLIR is that most of the optimization can be done at lower levels. Instead of everyone figuring out & deciding on their own how best to target & optimize for js, wasm, webgl, and/or webgpu, you just use the industry standard intermediate representation & let the browser figure out the tradeoffs. If there is inboar…
Yes it does.
Did something I said imply that?
OpenXLA is an intermediate layer that frameworks like PyTorch or JAX can use. It has pluggable backends, and so if there was a web-compatible backend (WebGL or WASM) then everyone could use it and all models that were built using something that used OpenXLA[1] would be compatible.
[1] Not 100% sure how low-level the OpenXLA intermediate representation is. I know it's not uncommon when porting a brand new primitive (eg a special kind of transformer etc) to a new architecture (eg CUDA->Apple M1) that some operations aren't yet supported, so this might be similar.