Hi! I maintain GPU.js.
>I guess it's doing some sort of transformation
That is exactly correct. From javascript to an abstract syntax tree, and then to whatever target language we need. In this case GLSL.
>Presumably there's a not-significant overhead in both starting it up
That has been the goal, we're really careful to measure it with releases.
>and getting data back from the gpu.js function
That is correct as well, it is about as costly as it would be without GPU.js. However you can enable pipeline on kernels, so they can communicate via textures, which is significantly faster, as we don't need to transfer back to the CPU.
>Is there a way to "compile" a gpu.js function to remove the translation step? That could be really useful.
It is built into every kernel. You simply call `kernel.toString(...args)`.
>I guess it's doing some sort of transformation
That is exactly correct. From javascript to an abstract syntax tree, and then to whatever target language we need. In this case GLSL.
>Presumably there's a not-significant overhead in both starting it up
That has been the goal, we're really careful to measure it with releases.
>and getting data back from the gpu.js function
That is correct as well, it is about as costly as it would be without GPU.js. However you can enable pipeline on kernels, so they can communicate via textures, which is significantly faster, as we don't need to transfer back to the CPU.
>Is there a way to "compile" a gpu.js function to remove the translation step? That could be really useful.
It is built into every kernel. You simply call `kernel.toString(...args)`.