On the Linux kernel developers' mailing list, a preliminary implementation of the drm-asahi driver for Apple's AGX series G13 and G14 GPUs, used in the Apple M1 and M2 chips, has been proposed. The driver is written in Rust and additionally includes a set of universal bindings over the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) subsystem that can be used for developing other graphic drivers in Rust. The published patch set is currently only proposed for discussion by kernel developers (RFC) but may be accepted into the mainline after completing the review and addressing any identified issues.
Since December, the driver has been included in the kernel package for the Asahi Linux distribution and has been tested by users of this project. The driver can be used in Linux distributions to facilitate graphical environments on Apple devices with M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, and M2 SoCs. In developing the driver, an attempt was made not only to increase safety by minimizing errors in memory handling in CPU-executed code but also to ensure partial protection against issues arising during firmware interactions. Specifically, the driver provides certain bindings for unsafe shared memory structures with complex pointer chains used in firmware for communication with the driver.
The proposed driver is used in conjunction with the asahi Mesa driver, which provides OpenGL support in user space and successfully passes compatibility tests with OpenGL ES 2 and is nearly ready to support OpenGL ES 3.0. At the same time, the kernel-level driver is originally being developed with future support for the Vulkan API in mind, and the programming interface for user space interaction has been designed with consideration of the UAPI provided by the new Intel Xe driver.
Source: opennet.ru
