Superconductor – real-time data visualization using WebCL, WebGL, Web Workers

Re:Superconductor – real-time data visualization using WebCL... by lmeyerov on Sunday June 30, 2013 @06:12PM (#5967457)

Ah, interesting. OpenCL/WebCL solve this problem, so I think the question is portability. Will compute shaders be landing in most WebGL implementations? WebGL seems generally limited to OpenGL ES, so I had only explored BrookGPU-style alternatives.

Targeting CUDA/OpenCL/WebCL was so that we can rely upon intermediate GPGPU compilers. Our DSL compiler outputs a bunch of for-loops, which traditional compilers love to optimize (the JIT for JS, LLVM for OpenCL, etc.). If we targeted a low-level language such as nvidia's PTX, I suspect we'd still want something like LLVM inbetween. Is there a good preprocessor for compute shaders?

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Re:Superconductor – real-time data visualization using WebCL... by pyalot2 on Monday July 01, 2013 @05:42PM (#5973765)

At least in the OpenGL world, compute shaders use more or less the same syntax as other kinds of shaders (GLSL).

It's true that WebGL does not have compute shaders (and neither does OpenGL ES), yet.

However OpenGL ES roughly tracks OpenGL's development with OpenGL ES 2.0 == OGL 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.0 == OGL 3.0, in each case with a bunch of features stripped but with the essential advances in place. OpenGL ES 4.0 which should come about in the next 2-3 years is very likely to include compute shaders.

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