Expose WebGPU?

[targos]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

WebGPU is a new web platform feature that allows to use graphics hardware power from JavaScript. With it, you can write algorithms in a shading language and take advantage of the high parallelism of GPUs to make fast computations.
The WebGPU API is being implemented by Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

I'm proposing that we work towards making the API available in standard installations under navigator.gpu, like in browsers.

Chrome's implementation is being developed as a standalone C++ library called Dawn.
They also have written Node.js bindings for it.
/cc @Kangz @ben-clayton What do you think about this?

What alternatives have you considered?

Let it be in userland.

[Kangz]

Whoever wants to use WebGPU in node should just use dawn.node and not bother reimplementing things. We use it for internal testing against the WebGPU CTS so it basically feature complete except for some device creation logic and swapchains. I don't know that it should be bundled in standard node installations: it's not going to work everywhere because you need a GPU or Swiftshader to make WebGPU run.

[targos]

I renamed the issue to "Expose WebGPU" because I'm really not suggesting we reimplement everything.
What I'd like to know is whether other people think it's a good idea to try and include dawn/dawn.node in standard Node.js installations (even if it may end up being available on incompatible systems).
BTW, I would be interested in trying dawn.node separately, but I haven't found any public build of it.

[bnoordhuis]

Deno supports WebGPU and ML people seem to love it.

An alternative to Dawn is wgpu / wgpu-native. In Rust, yes, but with broader community support and used outside Chrome/Chromium.

[mscdex]

I think we should leave this to userland.

[Kangz]

As long as there is a package that's easy to add for developers, it seems that userland would be fine, no?

[targos]

As long as there is a package that's easy to add for developers, it seems that userland would be fine, no?

Maybe, at least as a first step. Does such a package exist?

[Kangz]

It doesn't exist yet, mostly because the Dawn contributors don't have experience on how to do it (and because it only recently reached good enough quality). I'll volunteer @DeltaEvo to figure out how to setup dawn.node to be published. The difficult is to do it on multi OSes since the binary is OS depend.

[bnoordhuis]

There's already a Dawn binding but it's pretty buggy and doesn't look actively maintained (last update 2 years ago.)

[Kangz]

@maierfelix would you be interested in transitioning the webgpu package to be based on dawn.node? Let's chat on Matrix.

[github-actions]

There has been no activity on this feature request for 5 months and it is unlikely to be implemented. It will be closed 6 months after the last non-automated comment.

For more information on how the project manages feature requests, please consult the feature request management document.

[github-actions]

There has been no activity on this feature request for 5 months and it is unlikely to be implemented. It will be closed 6 months after the last non-automated comment.

For more information on how the project manages feature requests, please consult the feature request management document.

[benjamingr]

@nodejs/github-bot (hope that's the right ping), it looks like the never-stale label is broken ^

[bnoordhuis]

OTOH, if no one is actively working on it, then we may just as well close it out.

I would summarize the consensus as: no strong resistance against inclusion in core but no strong desire either. Third-party packages exist and are likely Good Enough(TM).

[benjamingr]

Closing as not planned (as this is not completed)

[devsnek]

For anyone wandering past in need of webgpu, I updated dawn to include a proper node.js module entrypoint, exposing a gpu object analogous to navigator.gpu: https://dawn.googlesource.com/dawn/+/refs/heads/main/src/dawn/node/index.js

if there is enough interest we may be able to set up an auto-published npm module.

[matthargett]

Yes, please make a blessed npm package!