WebGPU Prototype and Demos

UPDATE (Oct 2018): We’ve renamed our prototype WebGPU proposal to “WebMetal” to avoid confusion with the real WebGPU API.

A few weeks ago, we announced the creation of the W3C GPU for the Web Community Group and our proposal, WebGPU. As of Safari Technology Preview Release 26, and WebKit Nightly Build, a WebGPU prototype is available for you to experiment with on macOS.

To enable WebGPU, first make sure the Develop menu is visible using Safari → Preferences → Advanced → Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then, in the Develop menu, make sure Experimental Features → WebGPU is checked.

We also have written some simple demos to give you an idea of how the API works. Note that our implementation and documented proposal are not quite aligned, so the code in these demos will change over time. We’ve tried to indicate the places in the code where the prototype is behind the proposal. And, to reiterate, this is a proposal – the final API will almost certainly be quite different.

You should be aware that it is not recommended to browse the Web with this feature enabled. Not only is it experimental and non-standard, we haven’t implemented any validation of content, so an error in WebGPU might cause a crash, or worse.