WGSLs

WGSLs, shorthand for shader programs written in the WebGPU Shading Language (WGSL), are the shaders used with the WebGPU API. WGSL is the shading language designed for the WebGPU API, providing a safe, portable, and vendor-neutral framework for graphics and compute tasks across web and native implementations.

Design and features: WGSL is strongly typed and uses explicit memory and resource semantics. It defines scalar, vector, and matrix types, including f32, i32, u32, and composite types like vec2<f32>, vec3<f32>, and mat4x4<f32>. It supports structs, arrays, and storage and uniform buffers, textures, and samplers. Resource bindings are declared with group and binding qualifiers, and shader inputs/outputs use location-like decorations. The language aims to minimize ambiguity and a safe memory model.

Program structure: Shaders expose entry points annotated with stage information, such as vertex, fragment, or compute. Data exchanged between stages uses output and input variables with location attributes. WGSL requires explicit binding of resources and often uses layout declarations to describe how buffers, textures, and samplers are grouped and bound. These explicit qualifiers help ensure consistent behaviour across devices and driver implementations.

Status and usage: WGSLs are part of the WebGPU ecosystem and are supported by several WebGPU implementations and by native projects such as Dawn and wgpu. It is intended to be compiled by GPU backends into device-specific instructions. While still evolving, WGSL is the central shading language for WebGPU, providing a common substrate for web graphics, compute, and general GPU programming.

See also WebGPU, SPIR-V, GLSL, HLSL.