brendan-duncan

webgpu_inspector

JavaScript2024–2024

brendan-duncan / webgpu_inspector

webgpu_inspector

Inspection debugger for WebGPU

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3Distinct people

4Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

376GitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Inspection debugger for WebGPU

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by week4 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2024-04-21 16:40:46 UTC to 2024-09-24 11:56:49 UTC. Weeks start Monday, UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
Apr 15	2024-04-15 00:00:00 UTC	2024-04-22 00:00:00 UTC	2	1	1
Apr 22	2024-04-22 00:00:00 UTC	2024-04-29 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Apr 29	2024-04-29 00:00:00 UTC	2024-05-06 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
May 6	2024-05-06 00:00:00 UTC	2024-05-13 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
May 13	2024-05-13 00:00:00 UTC	2024-05-20 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
May 20	2024-05-20 00:00:00 UTC	2024-05-27 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
May 27	2024-05-27 00:00:00 UTC	2024-06-03 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jun 3	2024-06-03 00:00:00 UTC	2024-06-10 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jun 10	2024-06-10 00:00:00 UTC	2024-06-17 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jun 17	2024-06-17 00:00:00 UTC	2024-06-24 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jun 24	2024-06-24 00:00:00 UTC	2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jul 1	2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-07-08 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
Jul 8	2024-07-08 00:00:00 UTC	2024-07-15 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jul 15	2024-07-15 00:00:00 UTC	2024-07-22 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jul 22	2024-07-22 00:00:00 UTC	2024-07-29 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Jul 29	2024-07-29 00:00:00 UTC	2024-08-05 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Aug 5	2024-08-05 00:00:00 UTC	2024-08-12 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Aug 12	2024-08-12 00:00:00 UTC	2024-08-19 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Aug 19	2024-08-19 00:00:00 UTC	2024-08-26 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Aug 26	2024-08-26 00:00:00 UTC	2024-09-02 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Sep 2	2024-09-02 00:00:00 UTC	2024-09-09 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Sep 9	2024-09-09 00:00:00 UTC	2024-09-16 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Sep 16	2024-09-16 00:00:00 UTC	2024-09-23 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Sep 23	2024-09-23 00:00:00 UTC	2024-09-30 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

4 sources

ossobuco·Sep 24, 2024

I don't know about Tracy, but I've seen a couple WebGPU JS debugging tools simply intercepting calls to the various WebGPU functions like writeBuffer, draw, etc, by modifying the prototypes of Device, Queue and so on[0]. - 0: https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector/blob/main...

In Tracy: A real time, nanosecond resolution frame profiler

ossobuco·Jul 4, 2024

I've been using the webgpu inspector extension[0] and so far it's proving very useful. There are some occasional bugs but the author is very responsive on github and quick to fix issues. Couldn't get anything useful out of PIX on the other hand. - [0]: https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector

In GPU profiling for WebGPU workloads on Windows with Chrome

Twinklebear·Apr 21, 2024

Author of the WebGL volume rendering tutorial [0] you mentioned in the readme here, great work! Working in WebGL/JS is nice since you can deploy it everywhere, but it can be really hard for graphics programming as you've found because there are very few tools for doing real GPU/graphics debugging for WebGL. The only one I know of is [1], and I've had limited success with it. WebGPU is a great next step, it provides a modern GPU API (so if you want to learn Metal, DX12, Vulkan, they're more familiar), and modern GPU functionality like storage buffers and compute shaders, not to mention lower overhead and better performance. The WebGPU inspector [2] also looks to provide a GPU profiler/debugger for web that aims to be on par with native options. I just tried it out on a small project I have and it looks really useful. Another benefit of Web

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GPU is that it maps more clearly to Metal/DX12/Vulkan, so you can use native tools to profile it through Chrome [3]. I think it would be worth learning C++ and a native graphics API, you'll get access to the much more powerful graphics debugging & profiling features provided by native tools (PIX, RenderDoc, Nvidia Nsight, Xcode, etc.) and functionality beyond what even WebGPU exposes. Personally, I have come "full circle": I started with C++ and OpenGL, then DX12/Vulkan/Metal, then started doing more WebGL/WebGPU and JS/TS to "run everywhere", and now I'm back writing C++ but using WebGL/WebGPU and compiling to WebAssembly to still run everywhere (and native for tools). With WebGPU, you could program in C++ (or Rust) and compile to both native (for access to debuggers and tools), and Wasm (for wide deployment on the web). This is one of the aspects of WebGPU that is most exciting to me. There's a great tutorial on developing WebGPU w/ C++ [4], and a one on using it from JS/TS [5]. [0] https://www.willusher.io/webgl/2019/01/13/volume-rendering-w... [1] https://spector.babylonjs.com/ [2] https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector [3] https://toji.dev/webgpu-profiling/pix [4] https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/ [5] https://webgpufundamentals.org/

In Show HN: Volume rendering 3D data in Three.js and GLSL

SuboptimalEng·Apr 21, 2024Submission

Show HN: Volume rendering 3D data in Three.js and GLSL

I've been going through Cem Yuksel's "Introduction to Computer Graphics" course and thought that writing a volume renderer would be a good way to test my knowledge. It is a common technique used to render 3D medical data. Works by ray marching a specific step size, reading a 3D texture (e.g. MRI data), and calculating opacity values. Code should be easy to get started with for anyone familiar with the JS ecosystem. Questions for the HN community: I spent 20-25% of the entire time just setting up the project and fighting issues with the JavaScript ecosystem. This experience has made me consider learning Cpp, Metal, and XCode. Has anyone made the transition from WebGL/TS to Cpp or done it the other way around? What was your experience with it? And what about debugging? That's a big issue with WebGL. As for now, I'm thinking about picking up

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WebGPU next because it has an up-and-coming debugger made by Brendan Duncan[0] that looks promising. Edit: Anyone know why MRI data is sent via CDs and not the web? I started working on this project specifically because some people close to me got MRI scans and received CDs of their results. I know that some MRI data can be huge so downloading over the web doesn't make sense, but anything under 64MB should be sent over the web, no? For reference, I believe most MRI data can be under 250MB[1]. [0] https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-image-dimensions...

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