The Future for Tyr, a Rust GPU Driver for Arm Mali Hardware (lwn.net)
107 points by todsacerdoti 8 hours ago
davikr 8 hours ago
> 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
jeroenhd 7 hours ago
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.
pantalaimon 2 hours ago
I would envision to see some more GPU drivers from Chinese companies like MooreThreads
imcritic 7 hours ago
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.
c0balt 5 hours ago
jeroenhd 4 hours ago
kryptiskt 7 hours ago
ceteia 17 minutes ago
Weren't the old Linux kernel developers promised the opposite by Linus Torvalds? That they would be able to continue writing in C?
https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/20/2066
> The document claims no subsystem is forced to take Rust
rjsw 7 hours ago
Means that other platforms need to allow Rust in the kernel too in order to use future drivers.
saidinesh5 5 hours ago
What do you mean other platforms?
Also they can just expose c bindings to these rust libraries no?
rjsw 5 hours ago
hexo 6 hours ago
that is so ridiculous.
tialaramex 7 hours ago
> 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.
GZGavinZhao 7 hours ago
Can't wait to write a Rust driver for my eink tablet <3
AndrewDucker 8 hours ago
Interesting to see the building blocks come together. I hope that they can lay foundations that last.
Aldipower 8 hours ago
Tyr is a Danish metal band. Period. :-)
robert_foss 7 hours ago
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.
pinkmuffinere 2 hours ago
T-Y-R is also the root in semitic languages (eg, Hebrew and Arabic) related to flying! Maybe not on purpose, but I really like that incidental connection, given the combined reputation of rust and GPU operations for being fast.
afdbcreid an hour ago
As a Hebrew speaker I cannot understand how you came into this conclusion. The closest I can think of is ת-י-ר, which is the root of being in a trip.
MisterTea 7 hours ago
Technically they are from the Faroe Islands. Great band, seen them live many times.
MilanTodorovic 7 hours ago
Faroese actually