swift-webgpu

Swift bindings for WebGPU; a new graphics and compute API.

Despite being designed for the web, WebGPU can also be used natively, enabling developers with a modern, cross-platform API, without some of the complexities of lower-level graphics libraries.

Efforts are being made to define a standard native version of the API via a shared header. Note, however, that the specification is still work-in-progress.

Currently, swift-webgpu is based on the Dawn implementation, and generated from dawn.json.

Requirements

Dawn

To use swift-webgpu, you’ll first need to build Dawn. See Dawn’s documentation to get started.

swift-webgpu depends on the libwebgpu_dawn and libdawn_native shared libraries, which can be built like so;

mkdir -p out/Release
cd out/Release
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=1 ../..
make # -j N for N-way parallel build

Running the Demos

First, clone this project;

git clone https://github.com/henrybetts/swift-webgpu.git
cd swift-webgpu

Build the package;

DAWN_JSON=/path/to/dawn/dawn.json \
swift build -c release \
-Xcc -I/path/to/dawn/include \
-Xcc -I/path/to/dawn/out/Release/gen/include \
-Xlinker -L/path/to/dawn/out/Release/src/dawn/native \
-Xlinker -rpath -Xlinker /path/to/dawn/out/Release/src/dawn/native

Remember to replace /path/to/dawn with the actual path to the dawn directory. These arguments tell the compiler where to find the dawn headers, and the linker where to find the shared libraries. The DAWN_JSON variable defines the location of dawn.json, which is needed for code generation.

Finally, run the demos;

cd .build/release
./DemoInfo
./DemoClearColor
./DemoTriangle
./DemoCube
./DemoBoids

Installation

To use swift-webgpu with Swift Package Manager, add it to your Package.swift file’s dependencies;

.package(url: "https://github.com/henrybetts/swift-webgpu.git", branch: "master")

Then add WebGPU as a dependency of your target, and link the webgpu_dawn library;

.executableTarget(
    name: "MyApp",
    dependencies: [.product(name: "WebGPU", package: "swift-webgpu")],
    linkerSettings: [.linkedLibrary("webgpu_dawn")]
),

Basic Usage

Import the WebGPU module where needed;

import WebGPU

A typical application will start by creating an Instance, requesting an Adapter, and then requesting a Device. However, some of the specification is not yet implemented in Dawn, particularly regarding these initialization steps. Therefore, the DawnNative module exists for the time being, providing an entry point to the rest of the WebGPU API. For example;

import DawnNative

// create an instance
let instance = DawnNative.Instance()

// find an adapter
instance.discoverDefaultAdapters()
guard let adapter = instance.adapters.first else {
    fatalError("No adapters found")
}
print("Using adapter: \(adapter.properties.name)")

// create a WebGPU.Device
guard let device = adapter.createDevice() else {
    fatalError("Failed to create device")
}

See the demos for further usage examples.