Google has announced that WebGPU will be enabled by default with Chrome 113. This is a new API that allows web apps to access more of your graphics card’s capabilities. Chrome 113 is expected to arrive in three weeks. WebGPU will become available on Windows PCs with Direct3D 12 and macOS.
a blog states that WebGPU allows developers to achieve the same graphics quality they have now, with much less code. This was interesting in 2021 when it was added to Chrome, but now, in the age generative AIs, and large-language models, it could prove to be even more useful. Although services such as Google’s Bard or Microsoft’s Bing do not really make use of your local hardware there is still plenty of to create cool machine learning apps.
Developers could create better-looking games for the browser with this tool. Babylon.js offers a very impressive demo you can run if your browser is Chrome Beta. This isn’t half bad considering it runs in a web browser on Mac.
Google claims that this month’s release “serves to be a building block to future updates and enhancements,” promising more advanced graphics features and deeper access to shader cores in the future. There will also be improvements to how content is developed on WebGPU.
Since a long time, the API was in development. It was created in 2017, and has been under development since then. It is not a Chrome-only standard. In the future it will be available in Firefox as well as Safari. Google claims it is working to expand its support for Linux and Android.
Chrome news: Google announced Wednesday it will try to speed up future browser releases. Although stable releases will not be released earlier than expected (in fact, the release date has been delayed by a week), Google plans on “feature freezing” them later. This will reduce the time between the time developers stop adding new stuff and the public getting it. This will help to smoothen the development process.
