Intent to Ship: WebGPU: GPUTextureView for externalTexture binding

[François Beaufort]

Contact emails

fbea...@google.com

Explainer

Some developers using WebGPU for video effects pipelines have proposed allowing a compatible GPUTextureView (2D, single subresource) to be used in place of a GPUExternalTexture binding. This would simplify their shader logic, which currently needs to handle both GPUExternalTexture (for source video) and GPUTextureView (for intermediate processing) and reduce the need to dynamically compile shaders depending on where the texture comes from.

https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/pull/5079

Specification

https://gpuweb.github.io/gpuweb/#ref-for-dom-gpubindgrouplayoutentry-externaltexture%E2%91%A6

Summary

Functionality added to the WebGPU spec after its first shipment in a browser.

A GPUTextureView is now allowed to be used for an externalTexture binding when creating a GPUBindGroup. 

Blink component

Blink>WebGPU

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Not applicable

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

This feature has not yet been implemented in any browser. It has been approved by the GPU for the Web Community Group, with representatives from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. See minutes at  https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/GPU-Web-2025-02-19#add-gputextureview-support-to-importexternaltexture-5068 and https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/GPU-Web-2025-03-19#allow-using-a-texture-view-for-an-externaltexture-binding-5079

Gecko: No signal (Mozilla members have requested during weekly standardization meetings that we postpone filing standard positions until we reach Candidate Recommendation (CR) status in Q4.)

WebKit: Positive (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/294#issuecomment-1877411933)

Web developers: Positive (https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/4504)

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

None

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No

All platforms will eventually have support. Will immediately be available on Android, Android WebView, ChromeOS, Mac, and Windows, since those platforms already support WebGPU. Linux is planned to have WebGPU support in the future, so this feature will become available when WebGPU does.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes

WebGPU/WGSL have a conformance test suite (https://github.com/gpuweb/cts) that is regularly pulled into Chromium and part of the testing of Dawn/Tint in Chromium. While the CTS can be embedded in WPT, the WebGPU team opted to keep it separate in Chromium testing to use a customized harness for robustness and performance. All the tests about this feature in WebGPU CTS can be found through the below links: https://github.com/gpuweb/cts/pull/4304 and https://github.com/gpuweb/cts/pull/4306

Finch feature name

WebGPU.Enabled:EnabledToggles

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/398752857

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5106732252266496?gate=5112699639562240

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Daniel Bratell]

Gecko: No signal (Mozilla members have requested during weekly standardization meetings that we postpone filing standard positions until we reach Candidate Recommendation (CR) status in Q4.)

Doesn't this part creates a bit of a chicken-egg problem? Or am I misunderstanding the process. Does it just mean that Mozilla has delegated all this to their WebGPU spec representatives?

/Daniel

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[François Beaufort]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 5:59 PM Daniel Bratell <brat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Gecko: No signal (Mozilla members have requested during weekly standardization meetings that we postpone filing standard positions until we reach Candidate Recommendation (CR) status in Q4.)

Doesn't this part creates a bit of a chicken-egg problem? Or am I misunderstanding the process. Does it just mean that Mozilla has delegated all this to their WebGPU spec representatives?

Sorry. it should have said: "Mozilla members have requested during weekly standardization meetings that we don't file standard positions anymore as we reached Candidate Recommendation (CR) status."

[Domenic Denicola]

LGTM1. Although, it would be good to have a canonical place to link to for that Mozilla meta-position, just like you are already doing for the WebKit meta-position.

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[Yoav Weiss (@Shopify)]

LGTM2

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[Mike Taylor]

Is there a place to find meeting minutes where Mozilla stated this? Agree with Domenic that it would be good to have a stable reference.

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[Corentin Wallez]

We don't have minutes for these out-of-band meetings, but we want a stable reference that we can point at as well. From talking with the Mozilla engineers working on WebGPU, this would require our API owners to talk with their standard folks to come to some agreement there (though I don't know who that might be so I can't start an email thread).

[Alex Russell]

LGTM3, contingent on an official standards position disposition from Mozilla (but not blocking on what it is).

[Mike Taylor]

Thanks - I opened https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1205 so hopefully we can have a stable reference for future intents.

[François Beaufort]

Thank you Mike for driving this!