Re: Double precision floats (IEEE-754 binary64)

I thought a big blocker there was that metal has no support for float64 - but maybe just an extension then?

Rob
________________________________
From: Kelsey Gilbert <kelsey.gilbert@mozilla.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2022 4:15 PM
To: Samuele Decarli <sdecarli@esri.com>
Cc: public-gpu@w3.org <public-gpu@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Double precision floats (IEEE-754 binary64)

Float64 is likely eventually, yes. There are no concrete plans for them yet, though I expect it would be similar to what we are doing for float16.

However, we do have ieee floats in format, but not strictly speaking in accuracy/behavior, so be aware of that!

On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 12:59 PM Samuele Decarli <sdecarli@esri.com<mailto:sdecarli@esri.com>> wrote:
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 21:22:19 UTC