Google Chrome gets support for WebGPU: What it means for users

Updated: Apr 10, 2023, 05:19PM IST

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Google Chrome gets support for WebGPU: What it means for users

Google has added support for WebGPU in the latest beta for Chrome. The coming version of the browser, Chrome 113, will have WebGPU activated as a default API, allowing web applications to use the PC's graphics card to its full potential.

What is WebGPU
WebGPU is a new API that enables web applications to perform rendering and computation operations on PCs' dedicated GPU, with advanced features and strong support for general computations. It has a user-friendly JavaScript interface, integration with promises, and a streamlined development experience.

The API provides more flexibility in GPU programming and advanced capabilities not found in WebGL, which leads to significant benefits such as a much lower JavaScript workload for the same graphics and more than three times faster machine-learning model inferences.

How does WebGPU help users
WebGPU can help developers create the same level of graphics using much less code. It also improves machine learning performance by more than three times, which is a significant advantage, especially as AI and large language models become more prevalent. So, you can expect better performance for cloud games, generative AI tools and other web apps.

Google has said that the current release of WebGPU is just the beginning of a series of updates and improvements. They are working on developing more advanced graphics features. And they plan to enhance the development experience for creating content that runs on WebGPU.

Google revealed that multiple popular WebGL libraries are adopting WebGPU support.

The initial release of WebGPU will be available on Chrome 113 for Windows devices with Vulkan and Direct3D 12 support, as well as macOS and ChromeOS. Support for other platforms, such as Linux and Android, will be added soon.

While WebGPU is still developing on Firefox and Safari, the initial implementation is already on Chrome. According to Google, the first release of WebGPU will be compatible with ChromeOS, macOS, and Windows. Chromebooks which support the Vulkan API will have support for the WebGPU API. Support for other platforms will be added later in the year.

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