Apple Seeks To Position Metal as Part of New 3D Graphics Standard For Web (appleinsider.com)

Mikey Campbell, writing for AppleInsider: Apple's WebKit team on Tuesday proposed a new Community Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that will focus on developing a new standard API, perhaps based on Metal, for accelerating GPU-based 3D graphics and general computation for the web. Announced through Apple's WebKit blog, the new 'GPU for the Web' Community Group will discuss a potential next-generation web graphics API that can better leverage modern GPUs. Along with 3D content, Apple proposes GPU architecture might also be used to accelerate general web computations. As noted by Dean Jackson from the WebKit team, advancements in the GPU hardware space has led to identical enhancements in software APIs. He cites platform technologies like Apple's Metal, Microsoft's Direct3D 12 and the Khronos Group's Vulkan as offering lower overhead, and thus better performance, than the OpenGL standard. Unfortunately, the new graphics APIs contain nuanced architectural differences and are not available across all platforms, making them unsuitable for wide implementation on the web.

Comments

Vulkan

[Gibgezr]

The whole point of Vulkan is that it is a modern, high-performance, platform-agnostic API. Isn't that what they should use? It's already positioned as all that, it just needs the web folks to adopt it.

Re:Vulkan

[LynnwoodRooster]

But then how can Apple gain a proprietary stranglehold on the industry? How can they force adoption of their own standard and ensure a way to monetize all future 3D web graphics?

Re:Vulkan

[kbonin]

Apple was a member of Vulkan and those of us who code to GPUs were excited to have a unified target finally coming into view - until Apple withdrew and announced a proprietary alternative. They shouldn't be allowed to influence the standard now.