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Chrome ships WebGPU

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#161

Post by azangru »

7to2 wrote: post #145
codedokode wrote: post #140

I remember when WebRTC was introduced, it was found that it became very popular and was used by almost every page. But closer inspection showed that its use was to get user's IP address for better fingerprinting. I predict that WebGL/WebGPU will be mainly used for the same purposes. Nobody needs new fancy features, what people really need is more reliable fingerprinting (this is proven by number of uses of WebRTC for…

> But closer inspection showed that its use was to get user's IP address for better fingerprinting. Maybe that's why it fell to the wayside: scripts are no longer allowed to get the local IP address (taking with it the most useful aspect of WebRTC, true serverless p2p without internet[1]). [1] I'm not saying that I disagree with the decision, but still sad that we can't have nice things :(

Dang, this is so sad.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#162

Post by azangru »

codedokode wrote: post #152
paulgb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would essentially mean that every computation would have to run as slow as the slowest supported hardware. It would completely undermine the entire point of supporting hardware acceleration. I’m sympathetic to the privacy concerns but this isn’t a solution worth considering.

The solution is to put unncesessary features like WebGL, programmatic Audio API, reading bits from canvas and WebRTC behind a permission.

Who decides what's unnecessary?

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#163

Post by miohtama »

flohofwoe wrote: post #132
Ciantic wrote: post #120

This is a comment from Aras Pranckevičius [1]: > WebGL was getting really old by now. I do wonder whether WebGPU is a bit late too though (e.g. right now Vulkan decides that PSOs maybe are not a great idea lol) > As in, WebGPU is very much a "modern graphics API design" as it was 8 years ago by now. Better late than never, but... What's "modern" now seems to be moving towards like: bindless everything (like 3rd itera…

Aras is right, but the elephant in the room is still shitty mobile GPUs. Most of those new and fancy techniques don't work on mobile GPUs, and probably won't for the foreseeable future (Vulkan should actually have been two APIs: one for desktop GPUs, and one for mobile GPUs - and those new extensions are doing exactly that - splitting Vulkan into two more or less separate APIs, one that sucks (for mobile GPUs) and on…

I think it unrealistic management of expectations that desktop and mobile must or should be equal. There is plenty of web applications use cases one would like to run on a desktop, but they are irrelevant for mobile, for many other reasons as well. E.g. think editing spreadsheets.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#164

Post by miohtama »

mike_hock wrote: post #9
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

In case you confused this with webgl as I did: > WebGPU is a new API for the web, which exposes modern hardware capabilities and allows rendering and computation operations on a GPU, similar to Direct3D 12, Metal, and Vulkan. Unlike the WebGL family of APIs, WebGPU offers access to more advanced GPU features and provides first-class support for general computations on the GPU.

And to prevent device fingerprinting, all the operations are specified to deterministically produce the same bit-exact results on all hardware, and the feature set is fixed without any support for extensions, right? Or is this yet another information leak anti-feature that we need to disable?

The easiest option to prevent fingerprinting is to disable WebGPU. Or even better, which is already the option for many today, use one of privacy focused web browsers instead of Chrome.

Meanwhile there is a large audience who will benefit from WebGPU features e.g. gamers and this audience is in the numbers of hundreds of millions.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#165

Post by codedokode »

frankjr wrote: post #10
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #4

Can this be used to mine cryptocoins by malicious actors?

The spec touches on this, but the short answer is "yes". https://gpuweb.github.io/gpuweb/#security-abuse-of-capabilit...

If developers were a bit smarter and put this behind a permission then the answer would be no, and WebGPU couldn't be used for fingerprinting as well.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#166

Post by miohtama »

codedokode wrote: post #136
Timja wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to escape fingerprinting. Just one example: A script which runs many different types of computations. Each computation will take a certain amount of time depending on your hardware and software. So you will get a fingerprint like this: computation 1: ** computation 2: **** computation 3: ********** computation 4: ** computation 5: ************** computation 6: ************ computation 7: ********* etc…

Just put WebGL/WebGPU behind permission and the problem is solved. I don't understand why highly paid Google and Firefox developers cannot understand such a simple idea.

Just don’t use Chrome. There are plenty of alternative web browsers you can choose that are more privacy oriented. You are not Chrome’s customer unless you pay for it - or you have 100% money back guarantee. Demanding features on free product is never going to go anywhere.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#168

Post by codedokode »

azangru wrote: post #162
codedokode wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to put unncesessary features like WebGL, programmatic Audio API, reading bits from canvas and WebRTC behind a permission.

Who decides what's unnecessary?

Everything that can be used for fingerprinting should be behind a permission. Almost all sites I use (like Google, Hacker News or Youtube) need none of those technologies.

Re: Chrome ships WebGPU

#169

Post by oaiey »

Alifatisk wrote: post #40

Soon, there will be no need to install softwares to the computer. A modern browser will cover it all. What scares me is browsers getting bloated with all kinds of features while webapps getting bigger and bigger in size for no reason. Note, I am all for this feature getting widely adopted.

Emacs have a similar story to tell. Effectively, the browser is nowadays an Operating System running a VM. The computer history is having these kind of OS models for 50+ years now.
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