Here's the mini explainer from the chrome status entry motivation section: Tier1 lets developers port existing content to the web without rewriting to use WebGPU’s lower capabilities. Tier2 supports storage textures formats that don't have support in base WebGPU, meet the need for Unity and various startups to port Unreal Engine to the Web. Tier1 is a dependency of Tier2.
By exposing those capabilities as WebGPU features, developers can explicitly check for support and provide fallback solutions or alternative rendering paths when necessary. On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM 'Dan Clark' via blink-dev < [email protected]> wrote: > As someone less familiar with this area I'm having a hard time > understanding what this is for. > Could you share more context about this addition and the use cases > motivating it, or even better, put together a short explainer doc that does > so? > > -- Dan > On Friday, September 19, 2025 at 7:59:01 AM UTC-7 [email protected] > wrote: > >> LGTM1 >> On 9/18/25 9:49 p.m., Chromestatus wrote: >> >> *Contact emails* >> [email protected] >> >> *Explainer* >> None >> >> *Specification* >> https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/#texture-formats-tier1 >> >> *Summary* >> Extend GPU texture format support with capabilities like render >> attachment, blending, multisampling, resolve and storage_binding. >> >> *Blink component* >> Blink>WebGPU >> <https://issues.chromium.org/issues?q=customfield1222907:%22Blink%3EWebGPU%22> >> >> *Web Feature ID* >> webgpu <https://webstatus.dev/features/webgpu> >> >> *TAG review* >> None >> >> *TAG review status* >> Not applicable >> >> *Risks* >> >> >> *Interoperability and Compatibility* >> None >> >> *Gecko*: No signal ( >> https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1205) >> >> *WebKit*: Closed Without a Position ( >> https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/294#issuecomment-1877411933 >> ) >> >> *Web developers*: Positive (https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/3837) >> >> *Other signals*: >> >> *WebView application risks* >> >> Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that >> it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications? None >> >> >> *Debuggability* >> None >> >> *Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, >> Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?* >> NoAll platforms will eventually have support. Will immediately be >> available on Android, Android WebView, ChromeOS, Mac, and Windows, since >> those platforms already support WebGPU. Linux is planned to have WebGPU >> support in the future, so this feature will become available when WebGPU >> does. >> >> *Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests >> <https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/testing/web_platform_tests.md>?* >> YesWebGPU/WGSL have a conformance test suite ( >> https://github.com/gpuweb/cts) that is regularly pulled into Chromium >> and part of the testing of Dawn/Tint in Chromium. While the CTS can be >> embedded in WPT, the WebGPU team opted to keep it separate in Chromium >> testing to use a customized harness for robustness and performance. All the >> tests about this feature in WebGPU CTS can be found through >> https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Agpuweb%2Fcts+texture-formats-tier&type=code >> >> *Flag name on about://flags* >> Enable Unsafe WebGPU >> >> *Finch feature name* >> WebGPU.Enabled:UnsafeFeatures >> >> *Rollout plan* >> Will ship enabled for all users >> >> *Requires code in //chrome?* >> False >> >> *Tracking bug* >> https://issues.chromium.org/issues/445725447 >> >> *Estimated milestones* >> Shipping on desktop 142 >> Shipping on Android 142 >> Shipping on WebView 142 >> >> *Anticipated spec changes* >> >> Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or >> interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues >> in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may >> introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of >> the API in a non-backward-compatible way). None >> >> *Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status* >> https://chromestatus.com/feature/5116926821007360?gate=5198559351799808 >> >> This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status >> <https://chromestatus.com>. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "blink-dev" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/68ccb6ac.2b0a0220.28e063.02ac.GAE%40google.com >> <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/68ccb6ac.2b0a0220.28e063.02ac.GAE%40google.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "blink-dev" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/ca7fecb9-59d7-4b65-a1c0-3b7a7c55d7cen%40chromium.org > <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/ca7fecb9-59d7-4b65-a1c0-3b7a7c55d7cen%40chromium.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group. 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