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Very interesting how similar the code for setting up the pipeline is similar to Metal.
by atarian 3y ago
Very interesting how similar the code for setting up the pipeline is similar to Metal.
- adastra22 3y agoThat’s not a coincidence.
- MBCook 3y agoWasn’t the design of WebGPU heavily influenced be Metal? Or was it that metal came from a team in Apple that helped work on WebGPU?
- moron4hire 3y ago"Helped" is one way to describe it. "Sat down and kicked their feet until they got their way" is another.
- int_19h 3y agoWhat were the better options at the time?
- adastra22 3y agoOr standards bodies exist in practice to push vendor solutions on others. Apple plays that game well.
- isodev 3y agoIsn’t it nice when standards just happen to come together. I like the similarities, it certainly helps when switching from one to the other.
- troupo 3y agoApple and Mozilla presented WebGPU as basically a clone of Metal. Then the standard changed a bit, but it was still based on modern GPU APIs
- tormeh 3y agoI think the story was that Apple refused to ship/implement Vulkan drivers for their computers, and everyone was scared of this happening again with WebGPU, so Apple got their way with the design of WebGPU.
- modeless 3y agoI think everyone is in agreement that the Metal API is pretty nice and there was little objection to making the WebGPU API similar (unless portability concerns dictated otherwise). The main disagreement was over shaders.
- tormeh 3y agoNot really. Many wanted Vulkan for the web. But Apple virtually had a veto, apparently: https://cohost.org/mcc/post/1406157-i-want-to-talk-about-webgpu https://cohost.org/mcc/post/1406157-i-want-to-talk-about-web...
- aseipp 3y agoYes, really. There were other reservations about shader compilation in particular from other participants, Apple wasn't alone in that department (e.g. asset sizes and needing to fork the format to maintain compatibility guarantees). They did demand a non-binary format, which sealed the deal on no SPIR-V. But it was not as simple as "SPIR-V/Vulkan was perfect and what everyone except Apple wanted." The shading language by far had the most discussion and iterations; none of the participants in contrast had nearly as many reservations about the structure of the API.
- tormeh 3y agoIt would be weird if everyone wanted the same thing, Vulkan or otherwise, but it seems quite clear that where Apple wanted something and some others did not, Apple got its way more often than not.