Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
kvark.github.io
Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
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Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#2For the Folding@home project we would love to have GPU compute access widely available from the browser.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#3For the Folding@home project we would love to have GPU compute access widely available from the browser.
If you just care about GPU compute and not much about the shape of the API or it's overhead, then something like OpenGL ES 3.1 Compute Shaders or WebCL would be much easier to reach than WebGPU, technically.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#4I have this idea that if they split off WebAssembly, WebGL and WebAudio into a external format for applications it would be easier to implement than a full browser.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#5For the Folding@home project we would love to have GPU compute access widely available from the browser.
How many people do you think are actually interested in running the client in browser? I have Folding@Home on about 5-6 machines and I can't imagine a situation where I could run a web client but not a full client.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#6Couldn't many of the GPU operation be accessible via functions over typed arrays? How does this relate to using SIMD from JS?
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#7It has same downside as WASM. Running precompiled bytecode is a bad for security as it always been.
It was no more than a year when a remotely exploitable WASM hole was exposed (derivatives of Spectre and co.) Knowledgeable people told that ISA level hole that can be exploited remotely over the web will be "a one minute global IT disaster" if somebody would resort to propagating it through a big adnet or paid traffic scheme.
As for WebGL as it is now, there were numerous sites on my memory that froze/crashed/rebooted both Linux and Windows systems, which means that the prime suspect there was a buggy shader as it is the only thing resembling raw instructions that can be passed to gpu through webgl.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#8I have this idea that if they split off WebAssembly, WebGL and WebAudio into a external format for applications it would be easier to implement than a full browser.
You could probably do this now as a standalone Node app, if you want more explicit control over which APIs are available and where code can be run from.
The browser is indeed quite complex (and not just because of the massive historical baggage), but its job is to give the user control while safely downloading untrusted code and running it locally.
So, if your goal is to just have a simple standalone app I think you could stay largely compatible with APIs available in the browser environment.
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#9[deleted]
Re: Feasibility of low-level GPU access on the Web
#10For the Folding@home project we would love to have GPU compute access widely available from the browser.
How many people do you think are actually interested in running the client in browser? I have Folding@Home on about 5-6 machines and I can't imagine a situation where I could run a web client but not a full client.
Chromebooks?