wai: research note — determinism contract generalizes to 3D neural coding #55
2026-08-24
wai: research note — the determinism contract generalizes to 3D neural coding
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Landscape record (not normative). Learned coding is moving into 3D: JPEG Pleno point-cloud coding is finalized and reuses JPEG AI for its colour attributes, and Gaussian Splat Coding is under standardization applying Neural Network Coding to splat parameters. Both inherit the cross-platform non-determinism of learned 2D codecs. WAI already decodes one 3D representation byte-exactly — wai.splat.int_codec, a pure-i64 Gaussian-splat attribute codec at the decode-equivalence tier (splat-equivalence: the attribute tensor is byte-identical everywhere). The note records that the determinism contract + reconstruction binding generalize to decoded 3D representations exactly as to pixels, and is honest about scope: WAI's splat codec is WAI-native, NOT the ISO point-cloud bitstream — the shared thing is the problem and the approach. Because JPEG-Pleno PCC reuses JPEG AI for colour, the byte-exact JPEG-AI decode WAI has is a component a future wai.pointcloud.* path could build on. Recorded as the natural next capability, not a separate track. Framed self-referentially; standards named as standards, no comparisons. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>