Google Chrome beta hints at tantalizing performance improvements
Browsing the web and using web apps in Google Chrome may be about to get a lot faster, as Google is testing a number of new upgrades in the latest beta of its browser.
According to a new Chromium blog post, the search giant is testing new upgrades related to WebCodecs, WebGPU, scheduling and more in the recently released Chrome 94 beta.
Since existing media APIs including HTMLMediaElement, Media Source Extensions, WebAudio, MediaRecorder, and WebRTC are high-level and tightly focused, a low-level codec API would do a better job of supporting emerging applications such as the Streaming games without the increased cost of network and processor. existing JavaScript or WebAssembly codec implementations.
For this reason, Google introduced the WebCodecs API in Chrome 94, which allows programmers to use multimedia components such as video and audio decoders, raw video frames, and frame decoders already present in their browser.
WebGPU API
The WebGPU API is the successor to the WebGL and WebGL2 graphics APIs for the web, as it provides modern features such as “GPU computing” as well as lower access to GPU hardware as well as more predictable performance.
These features are an improvement over existing WebGL interfaces which were originally designed for drawing images, but have been reused for other types of calculations, but with a lot of effort.
WebGPU, on the other hand, exposes modern computer graphics capabilities, including Direct3D 12, Metal, and Vulkan, to perform rendering and calculations on a computer’s GPU. Additional advantages of WebGPU over previous technologies also include the separation of resource management work preparation and submission to the GPU, pipeline states that work the same as operating system APIs, and binding groups that allow graphics drivers to make the necessary preparations before rendering.
What all of this essentially means for end users of Chrome is that Google’s browser will soon be better at rendering web content. While the company is currently testing these new features in the beta of Chrome 94, it plans to make them generally available with the release of Chrome 99, which is expected to be available in January of next year.