[zarzavat]

You can have compute shaders in WebGL2, and WebGPU is around the corner. GPU power is available but then you run into the thorny issue of specs...

Consumer machines vary wildly in their GPU capabilities, especially VRAM. So how do you know that your nice accelerated algorithm is going to work if the user has an old GPU? And what do you do if it doesn’t work? Run on the CPU? Tell the user their machine is too weak?

Here the advantage of GPUs (performance) is also the biggest disadvantage: a gigantic range of performance profiles. At least with CPUs the oldest CPU is only going to be a small integer factor slower than a new one in single thread.

What unites gamers and machine learning is an expectation that the user has a reasonably recent and capable GPU. But these are small, self-selecting populations.

On the server side the issue is cost. GPUs are expensive, and usually not necessary, so nobody is going to write code that requires one without a good reason.

[pjmlp]

Good luck letting the average JavaScript coder take advantage of them.

This is the problem, GPUs are still a very specialised skill.