
WebCL – Heterogeneous parallel computing in HTML5 web browsers - matt42
https://www.khronos.org/webcl/
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kevingadd
Relevant Bugzilla bug for Gecko:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664147#c30](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664147#c30)

An interesting spec, certainly, but no traction so far. A bit unfortunate. It
sounds like on desktops the ARB_compute_shader GL extension provides a lot of
the functionality you'd get through OpenCL with less new feature surface (it
can piggy-back on WebGL), while on mobile there is currently not common access
to OpenCL. Interested to see whether either of those situations change.

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lmeyerov
Close, but it looks like the pipeline for WebGL extensions will get feature-
wise, in 5 years, where OpenCL was upon release ~6 years ago.. if even. Basing
webgl standards on already obsoleted mobile opengl standards is bad for the
web.

(Our startup is deep in this space, and after using both WebCL and WebGL, are
going a third way.)

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just_bytecode
One one hand I'm happy to see the web able to do more and more. On the other
hand, I worry that as we turn the browser into a platform with all these
client side capabilities, browsers will become big complicated messes.

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vezzy-fnord
They already are, to one extent or another. Browsers are rivaling monolithic
kernels and entire operating systems with userspace applications in size.

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Rusky
I wish we would see more browser features (cross-browser standards, app
deployment style, ability to run random 3rd party code relatively securely,
app interoperability) moved into the OS, rather than more OS features moved
into the browser.

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pjmlp
We already have them, it is just web devs tend to blindly ignore them.

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Rusky
I can't quite yet make a native, cross-OS app I can deploy by clicking a link
and that anyone will trust not to eat their computer just by running it. It's
also a lot more work to implement things like networking.

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pjmlp
JNLP deployment of Java applications.

Click once deployment for .NET applications as another example.

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coldtea
Only nobody likes Java desktop applications. Including me, and I've programmed
professionally in the language since 1998.

And they are non starters for demanding multimedia work, which is some of the
most interesting stuff you want to do in the desktop as opposed as a web app.

.NET feels better (because MS didn't screw up as much, as Java did with the
overengineered uncanny valley mess that is Swing), but it's not cross
platform.

So, still, not comparable to deploying in the browser sandbox.

~~~
pjmlp
> So, still, not comparable to deploying in the browser sandbox.

That much is true, I haven't yet used so brain damaged set of programming
tools as the HTML/JavaScript/CSS gimmick required to make the so called web
applications in all browser versions required by our customers.

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jnbiche
Why was this posted now? It's been around since 2011, and since then hasn't
seen any significant browser penetration as far as I know.

Have there been new developments?

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randomfool
Last I see on the Blink front is
[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-
dev/xy_ExyPCN1I), essentially: 'No'.

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Hydraulix989
Embedding computationally hard problems into users' browsers and leeching
users' computing hardware to solve these problems for you? I can't think of an
actual application's use case for this that's not nefarious.

Reminds me of the MIT Jersey kids who were about to try doing in-browser
Bitcoin mining using WebGL.

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ryderm
folding@home? hardly nefarious

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kllrnohj
Why would you want F@H in a browser instead of as an app?

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morenoh149
atwoods law

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IvanK_net
WebCL is already running on Tizen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurCVdaUTMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurCVdaUTMY)
So that is going to be my next cellphone ;)

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pjmlp
If you can _ever_ get one.

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Joyfield
Imagine Facebook/Google renting out capacity on its users computers for
companies and giving money to people for being able to do so.

