Additionally, designed for 2015 hardware capabilities, with JavaScript in mind, in a sandboxed environment.

Some folks are reaching out to WebGPU outside the browser, because Vulkan is a pain to program for, and they misuse WebGPU as middleware, although a less capable one, due to its original design, and who is driving its standardisation process.

Regarding SYCL, Intel basically bought the only company that was shipping a good developer experience for it, CodePlay, which used to do specialized compilers for game consoles, and pivoted into GPGPU.