dotJS 2019 - Jana Beck - Escaping flatland: a romance of data science in the browser
Channel: dotconferences
Date: 2020-01-16

Filmed at https://2019.dotjs.io on December 5-6, 2019 in Paris. More talks on https://dotconferences.com/talks

Jana covers how to bring multi-dimensional computing power to the browser using Web Workers. She focuses on one particular dimensionality reduction algorithm—UMAP—used more and more frequently these days to visualize high-dimensional datasets. She deep dives into the specific features of Web Workers that aid in making it possible to perform tasks typically reserved for cloud computing jobs in the browser, albeit on smaller samples from data sets.

These features include transferable objects, which allow for efficient, zero-copy passing of computed results back to the browser from the Worker and OffscreenCanvas, a bleeding edge browser feature that can let us even perform the visual rendering of the UMAP result in a non-blocking Worker.