55

The Future for Tyr, a Rust GPU Driver for Arm Mali Hardware

> Dave Airlie just announced in the Maintainers Summit that the DRM subsystem is only ""about a year away"" from disallowing new drivers written in C and requiring the use of Rust.

wow

3 hours agodavikr

When the C absolutist maintainers fought for control over the ability to keep Rust out of their ballpark, I didn't expect the reverse to happen.

Still, I think it makes a lot of sense. Completely new GPU drivers are quite rare and the macOS drivers from Asahi are a showcase proving that Rust and GPU drivers work together well. If there's any subcomponent switching to Rust-first for new contributions, it makes sense for it to be the one that had already been proven to be Rust-compatible.

2 hours agojeroenhd

Asahi project looks barely alive, almost abandoned. I know that their explanation of low activity is that they are being active elsewhere, supposedly pushing all their work upstream, but this has been happening for months and they don't give any reports about their progress, so I'm worried it will all die soon. And given that the project barely brought some Linux compatibility for m1 and m2 hardware and no prospects for bringing similar compatibility for newer generations - I fear it all will be kinda useless in the end.

2 hours agoimcritic

Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that they started supporting M3? That smells like progress to me.

an hour agokryptiskt

Means that other platforms need to allow Rust in the kernel too in order to use future drivers.

an hour agorjsw
[deleted]
an hour ago

that is so ridiculous.

an hour agohexo

> One simply cannot deploy a driver that [...] crashes and takes the user's work with it.

Somebody needs to tell whoever wrote the drivers in the PC where I'm writing this.

2 hours agotialaramex

Can't wait to write a Rust driver for my eink tablet <3

2 hours agoGZGavinZhao

Interesting to see the building blocks come together. I hope that they can lay foundations that last.

3 hours agoAndrewDucker

Tyr is a Danish metal band. Period. :-)

2 hours agoAldipower

I thought Tyr was the Norse god of War & Justice.

Considering that the Mali GPUs were developed by ARM Norway, and this driver is Just, I would say this is one aptly named driver.

2 hours agorobert_foss

Technically they are from the Faroe Islands. Great band, seen them live many times.

2 hours agoMisterTea

Faroese actually