Google has included the WebGPU API in Chrome 113 beta. This programming library aims to provide functionality for computer technology and modern 3D graphics for web browsersusing existing standards such as Direct3D, Vulkan and Metal.

It should be noted that this WebGPU API is joint effort of GPU for the web group created by the organization World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and includes excellent collaborations from Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, Intel or Google itself. It’s only available in Chrome at the moment, but it will soon make its way to other browsers like Mozilla and Safari to become a universal standard. Obviously, all other Chromium-based browsers (including Microsoft Edge) will automatically support WebGPU due to their shared core.

WebGPU API: the next level

If WebGL brought GPU-accelerated 3D graphics to the web, WebGPU is the next level. And in several sections, after six years of development, it promises a lot. Google talks about “significant benefits” in 3D and demanding parallel computing tasks, including a significantly reduced JavaScript load for the same graphics and a more than threefold improvement in the inference of machine learning models. Compared to WebGL, WebGPU provides more flexible GPU scheduling and access to advanced features of modern graphics chips, such as dedicated cards.

And another important point: this is not a direct port of any existing native APIs, but rather builds upon them to improve 3D graphics on the web. So it uses Direct3D 12 (Windows), Metal (macOS) as well as Vulkan with cross-platform support and an open source license to reach other operating systems such as Linux.

The API is designed from the ground up with the web in mind and on both desktop and mobile platforms, although these will still be limited when creating WebGPUDevice objects that require the 3D desktop class API. Those responsible for Chrome say that this first release is just the foundation for what’s to come in the future, and they’re already working on it “deeper access”» on shader cores and other machine learning feature optimizations.

An initial implementation of WebGPU is available in Chrome 113 for ChromeOS devices with Vulkan support, Windows systems with Direct3D 12 support, and macOS via Metal. It is also working to support Linux, iOS or Android, as well as other browsers that will also use this highly focused JavaScript-based API to achieve modern 3D graphics on the web.

And in the joint efforts of the giants of the industry, which must achieve a universal standardization its use with all the benefits it entails.