After Safari and Firefox, Chrome is preparing for the arrival of WebGPU

The Chrome 94 development release is an opportunity for Google to integrate WebGPU into its browser. An effort already made at Apple for Safari and Also started by Mozilla Over a year in Firefox.

WebGPU is the stated successor to WebGL, a group of APIs that specialize in image rendering that are originally based on the OpenGL standard. The OpenGL program that Apple eventually acquired and abandoned when it developed its own 3D instruction set: Metal.

In 2017, after many experiments by Google to develop WebG that showed its limits, Apple you have a suggestion to the W3C Consortium to replace it with an open and redesigned 3D API: WebGPU. With these new guidelines, web developers can create 3D content whose display and animation can be supported by the device’s graphics card, thus reducing the burden on the main processor.

WebGPU relies on a metal-inspired syntax for dialogue with the graphics card. But it can’t be a pure port of Apple’s 3D APIs, as WebGPU aims to improve Direct3D 12 on Windows and Vulkan (cross-platform 3D APIs using the OpenGL suite).

At Apple, WebGPU integration is still done in Technology Preview versions of Safari. Firefox is still a work in progress, while Google does not expect to test this functionality before Chrome 97, scheduled for January 26, 2022.

It must be said that WebGPU itself is not yet complete in the first version and its features are still a topic Discussions and Developments within the W3C.