Double precision floats (IEEE-754 binary64)

• From: Samuele Decarli <sdecarli@esri.com>
• Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2022 16:54:18 +0000
• To: "public-gpu@w3.org" <public-gpu@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <461a036d9b576e5f49baabecef84918f548dc25b.camel@esri.com>

Hello,

I'm interested in knowing if there are plans to support double
precision float (IEEE-754 binary64) types and operations in WGSL
shaders, especially compute ones.

I see from the spec that there is a f32 (IEEE-754 binary32) type
supported, as well as f16 (IEEE-754 binary16) (via extension). While
doubles seem supported via AbstractFloat as compile-time/shader
creation constants.
Double precision floats are useful for scientific computation and GIS
and are supported by some GPUs, particularly on desktops.
Are there plans to add support for them to WebGPU (either in the
required spec or via extensions)?

Best regards,
Samuele

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2022 19:58:31 UTC