taichi.js

taichi.js is a modern GPU computing framework for Javascript. It transforms Javascript functions into WebGPU Compute Shaders for massive parallelization. It is a Javascript version of the Python library Taichi.

Zoo

On Chrome v98+, visit https://taichi-js.com to see taichi.js in action. The webpage provides an interactive code editor that allows you to write, compile, and run taichi code.

Sample Program

Provided that there exists a HTML canvas with id result_canvas, the following Javascript code will compute and animate a Julia Set fractal using WebGPU:

let fractal = async () => {
    await ti.init() 

    let n = 320
    let pixels = ti.Vector.field(4, ti.f32,[2*n, n])

    let complex_sqr = (z) => {
        return [z[0]**2 - z[1]**2, z[1] * z[0] * 2]
    } 

    ti.addToKernelScope({pixels, n, complex_sqr}) 

    let kernel = ti.kernel(
        (t) => {
            for(let I of ndrange(n*2,n)){ // Automatically parallelized
                let i = I[0]
                let j = I[1]
                let c = [-0.8, cos(t) * 0.2]
                let z = [i / n - 1, j / n - 0.5] * 2
                let iterations = 0
                while( z.norm() < 20 && iterations < 50 ){
                    z = complex_sqr(z) + c
                    iterations = iterations + 1
                }
                pixels[i,j] = 1 - iterations * 0.02
                pixels[i,j][3] = 1
            }
        }
    )

    let htmlCanvas = document.getElementById("result_canvas")
    htmlCanvas.width = 2*n
    htmlCanvas.height = n
    let canvas = new ti.Canvas(htmlCanvas)

    let i = 0
    async function frame() {
        kernel(i * 0.03)
        i = i + 1
        canvas.setImage(pixels)
        requestAnimationFrame(frame)
    }
    requestAnimationFrame(frame)
}
fractal()

The canvas will show the following animation:

Set-up

Set-up WebGPU

taichi.js is based on WebGPU, but WebGPU is not publicly available yet. To enable WebGPU, the web browser must be either

• Chrome v98+, with a correct WebGPU origin trial token for your host.

  The origin trial token should look something like

  /*token for 127.0.0.1:8080*/
  <meta http-equiv="origin-trial" content="AmLeIKgIO7v4LsGlggOO+uPfu+0GtBaIufDglDXjaD3phTLW7aH6OrNqfgx67gTCplF0JnRVrI/xXOpFRACrLwIAAABJeyJvcmlnaW4iOiJodHRwOi8vMTI3LjAuMC4xOjgwODAiLCJmZWF0dXJlIjoiV2ViR1BVIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjUyODMxOTk5fQ==">
  

• Chrome Canary, Firefox Nightly, or Safary Technology Preview

Using taichi.js in your webpage

1. Clone the github repo, or npm install taichi.js
2. Locate zoo/ti.js, and include it in your html.

   <script src="/path/to/ti.js"></script>