The Future for Tyr, a Rust GPU Driver for Arm Mali Hardware
3 months ago
- #Rust
- #Linux-Kernel
- #GPU-Drivers
- Tyr team made significant progress in 2025, developing a Rust GPU driver for Arm Mali hardware, demonstrated by running SuperTuxKart at Linux Plumbers Conference.
- The DRM subsystem will soon disallow new C drivers, requiring Rust, pushing Tyr to outline a 2026 roadmap for upstreaming.
- Tyr aims to support Mali's market share in phones and embedded platforms, evolving with Nova Rust GPU driver for broader ecosystem utility.
- A version of Tyr was merged into the 6.18 kernel, but lacks key Rust abstractions; downstream branch runs desktop environments and games.
- Tyr lacks power-management, frequency-scaling, and GPU-recovery features, critical for mobile devices where power and thermal management are vital.
- Vulkan compatibility via PanVK and passing the Vulkan Conformance Testing Suite are goals, alongside expanding support beyond Mali-G610.
- Missing Rust abstractions include GEM shmem objects, GPUVM, io-pgtable, and DRM device initialization, blocking further progress.
- Future work includes reworking job-submission logic in Rust, possibly introducing JobQueue to replace drm_gpu_scheduler, with Tyr as a testbed.
- Tyr's progress in 2025 sets a foundation for 2026, focusing on upstreaming, missing features, and Rust abstractions for a deployable driver.