webgpu 1.1.2

A Python based WebGPU API using pyodide

WebGPU API for Python for local and Pyodide development

This library provides a Python wrapper around the WebGPU API that runs in the browser via Pyodide or connects to a local Python instance. It is intended for interactive visualization and compute in environments such as Jupyter notebooks and plain HTML pages.

The package bundles a small rendering framework (scenes, cameras, labels, colormaps) and utilities to work with WGSL shaders from Python. It is used in higher level frameworks like ngsolve_webgpu for GPU-accelerated finite element visualizations in the browser.

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Features

• Browser-based GPU access via WebGPU from local Python and Pyodide.
• Python-first API for creating renderers, scenes and simple GUI controls.
• Jupyter integration through a webgpu.jupyter helper module.
• WGSL tooling:
  • simple #import mechanism for shader code
  • conditional compilation using #ifdef/#else/#endif
• Ready-to-use building blocks:
  • Renderer, Scene, Camera, Labels, Colormap, Clipping, Font
  • utilities for GPU buffers and bindings

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Requirements

• Python 3.8 or newer
• A browser with WebGPU support (for example a recent Chrome or Edge)
• For notebook use: JupyterLab or Jupyter Notebook

To check WebGPU support in your browser, you can use common WebGPU capability pages (for example WebGPU report pages linked from the project website).

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Installation

From PyPI

pip install webgpu

From source

git clone https://github.com/CERBSim/webgpu
cd webgpu
pip install -e .

Documentation

The full project documentation, including API reference, tutorials and user guide, is published at:

• https://cerbsim.github.io/webgpu/

Examples

The repository contains several examples:

• examples/first_shader.ipynb – minimal example drawing a triangle with custom WGSL shader code.
• examples/websocket.ipynb – example using the websocket link.
• docs/introduction.ipynb – overview and introductory material.

Additional, more advanced examples in docs/*.ipynb (compute, instanced shapes, selection).

Browser support

This library relies on the browser’s WebGPU implementation. In practice this means:

• A recent Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge) or Firefox is recommended.
• Some platforms may require enabling experimental WebGPU flags.
• Mobile and non-Chromium browsers may have partial or no support.

If WebGPU is not available, initialization will fail. See project documentation and browser-specific WebGPU status pages for details and troubleshooting.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the LGPL-2.1-or-later. See the LICENSE file for details.