Zero-Copy GPU Inference from WebAssembly on Apple Silicon

(abacusnoir.com)

44 points | by agambrahma 5 hours ago ago

16 comments

  • saagarjha 2 hours ago

    I'm curious what this offers over just building the host side code to be native?

  • trueno 3 hours ago

    > on Apple Silicon, a WebAssembly module's linear memory can be shared directly with the GPU: no copies, no serialization, no intermediate buffers

    enhance

    > no copies, no serialization, no intermediate buffers

    would it kill people to write their own stuff why are we doing this. out of all the things people immediately cede to AI they cede their human ability to communicate and convey/share ideas. this timeline is bonkers.

    • Aurornis an hour ago

      I’ve become overly sensitive to it as well because it’s such a reliable indicator that there are other problems in the work.

      I’ve wasted so much time looking at interesting repos this year before discovering that one of the main claims was a hallucination, or that when I got to the specific part of the codebase it just had a big note from the LLM that’s it’s a placeholder until it can figure out how to do the requested thing.

      The people who have AI write their articles don’t care if it works or if it’s correct. They’re trying to get jobs and want something quick and interesting that will appeal to a lazy hiring manager. We’re just taking the bait too.

    • notepad0x90 44 minutes ago

      I don't know, to me your sentiment sounds a lot like how back in the day they used to say "you can't just use a calculator all the time, use your brain and show the work on pen and paper".

      humans have been using tools to communicate since pre-history. language itself is one tool of communication invented to supersede body-language and grunting and noises. the thought and idea is theirs, it was communicated. Would it be that much different if they used a spellchecker extensively to edit their work?

      I get why you're annoyed but is it really such a big deal? random people aren't to blame for whatever other annoyances "AI slop" has created.

      • an0malous a few seconds ago

        > I get why you're annoyed but is it really such a big deal?

        Because it signals that your priority is your own productivity and gains and not offering value to anyone else. You’re asking people to read something that you couldn’t be bothered to write. It’s an intrinsically demeaning gesture, like “it’s not worth my time to communicate something to you but I still want to take your time to read it.”

        > your sentiment sounds a lot like how back in the day they used to say "you can't just use a calculator all the time, use your brain and show the work on pen and paper"

        With a calculator the results should be indistinguishable from pen and paper results. That’s not the case with AI slop because people call tell it’s AI slop.

      • rdedev 6 minutes ago

        > language itself is one tool of communication invented to supersede body-language and grunting and noises

        That's a pretty utilitarian view of language. How would it feel if everyone spoke and wrote like a PR representative? This is what an article written by an LLM is starting to sound like.

        I'm even willing to argue that the way in which you convey your ideas is as important as the idea itself. Like we could all be eating soylent for our daily nutritional requirements but we don't. The taste of the food we eat is important. It's the same with writing for me

    • rvz 3 hours ago

      This sort of obvious pattern is an instant AI dead give-away that I keep on seeing in hundreds of blogs and code posted on this site:

         "Here is X - it makes Y"
      
         "That's not X, it's Y."
      
         "...no this, no that, no X, no Y."
      
      Another way of telling via code is by deducing the experience of the author if they became an expert of a different language since...yesterday.

      There will be a time where it will be problematic for those who over-rely on AI and will struggle on on-site interviews with whiteboard tests.

      • bensyverson 3 hours ago

        I think the days of on-site interviews with whiteboard tests may be drawing to a close faster than you suspect

        • JSR_FDED an hour ago

          Huh, I’m 100% going to interview this way the next time I have to hire an engineer. I can’t think of a better way to get a sense of how a candidate reasons about things, and of their values - do they have a sense of responsibility, conscientiousness, team fit.

          All other things that could be LLM-mediated have no more signal.

          • andsoitis 25 minutes ago

            > I can’t think of a better way to get a sense of how a candidate reasons about things

            Some ideas to help you: ask the candidate something underspecified and watch what they do first. Do they ask clarifying questions, make their assumptions explicit? After they answer ask what would change their mind, where does that break down? Pick a topic they know and ask them to explain it to a smart non-engineer. Make them estimate something they can’t look up (forces them to decompose, bound, and calibrate). Once they’ve proposed a solution to a question, change the constraints to see if they can adapt or whether they’re stuck.

            What you want to evaluate is dynamic reasoning, adaptability.

        • z0r an hour ago

          Is this implying that you don't believe people will hire programmers anymore?

        • m00dy 2 hours ago

          I also think we will never go back to good old days.

  • wmf 3 hours ago

    This works in wasmtime not browsers.

    • thrill 3 hours ago

      Why would it not work in a browser?

      • m00dy 3 hours ago

        it would be hard to share the same memory location with gpu, right ?

        • junon 2 hours ago

          If the browser supported it it could expose it via a buffer view or something, but that'd be quite the security surface area one would think.