having open source gpu runtime, from api to metal, would be nice. but as you can see, the real meat of the business (the compiler) will probably never-ever be open sourced for internal political reasons. which is the most interesting component.
it must be said the gpu crowd is very different to the cpu crowd. the cpu crowd trips over themselves to tell everyone about their ISA. the gpu crowd keep it very close to their chest. (the gpu isas are also quite batshit insane but thats another conversation.) you wind up with almost polar opposite experiences in terms of how these two groups interact with the broader industry.
gpu people reeeaally don't want you prying your nose beyond the userspace APIs, in my experience.
EDIT - to add though... that is kind of understandable, because the gpu crowd is under a lot more pressure to support basically everything and everyone. opengl, dxil, spirv, opencl - and the dense matrix of combinations. I often see people hate on Apple for developing their own API (Metal), but honestly? I totally get it. in retrospect they probably did the right thing.
we have an epidemic of gpu programming "specs" and "standards", with no end in sight. i can't help but keep editing this comment with more of my hot takes: ofcourse nvidia owns the GPU programming space. they're the only ones offering anything resembling an actual platform! and they will continue dominating the space, because the rest of the players are too busy playing in their own ballpens.
I think the only way to dislodge nvidia is to ape their silicon. a USSR needs to come along, steal their masks, and just make carbon copies. not a shim, just straight up copy nvidia 100%. like, you run `nvidia-smi` and it reports back "yep this is a real nvidia card". and then sell it for half the price. it would be totally illegal, but when youre a state actor You Can Just Do Things.
Anything with an ARM Mali family GPU, same as you'd find for the question "where are Nvidia drivers used" as being "anywhere an Nvidia GPU is used". There isn't a premade list of certain people/companies who might ever used a certain brand GPU in their products, it's "just about anywhere". That can be anything including phones, tablets, mini PCs, laptops, SBCs, TV boxes, VR headsets, and so on - it's not limited to use in a specific product/manufacturer/type of device only.
If you're looking for something hackable to play with the Mali driver options on yourself, Chromebooks or SBCs (like the one in the article) are usually the easiest bet and where the development is done vs the more fixed-by-manufacturer type devices like the typical phone where you get what they decide to package (which may or may not be the particular open driver you're looking to see used).
Hmm, not really. As mentioned above, anything including phones, tablets, mini PCs, laptops, SBCs, TV boxes, VR headsets, and so on. Chromebooks and TVs would just be 2 examples of these types of devices.
As a solid example, the screenshots from the article are not taken from a Chromebook or TV :).
Great accomplishment from the developers. Being announced in July and already running gnome and games. 2026 is going to become very interesting
Would you be able to elaborate further on the implications? What sort of devices and use cases would benefit from this work?
Looks like this is ARM specific, and is a layer between more 'traditional' APIs, ala vulkan and opengl, and the device's gpu.
Would this work provide speed ups or is it more for compatibility?
You can read more about the organization of the work and how it's split between kernel and user space at https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/08/06/writ....
This didn't really answer the question. _Who_ benefits from these drivers
having open source gpu runtime, from api to metal, would be nice. but as you can see, the real meat of the business (the compiler) will probably never-ever be open sourced for internal political reasons. which is the most interesting component.
it must be said the gpu crowd is very different to the cpu crowd. the cpu crowd trips over themselves to tell everyone about their ISA. the gpu crowd keep it very close to their chest. (the gpu isas are also quite batshit insane but thats another conversation.) you wind up with almost polar opposite experiences in terms of how these two groups interact with the broader industry.
gpu people reeeaally don't want you prying your nose beyond the userspace APIs, in my experience.
EDIT - to add though... that is kind of understandable, because the gpu crowd is under a lot more pressure to support basically everything and everyone. opengl, dxil, spirv, opencl - and the dense matrix of combinations. I often see people hate on Apple for developing their own API (Metal), but honestly? I totally get it. in retrospect they probably did the right thing.
we have an epidemic of gpu programming "specs" and "standards", with no end in sight. i can't help but keep editing this comment with more of my hot takes: ofcourse nvidia owns the GPU programming space. they're the only ones offering anything resembling an actual platform! and they will continue dominating the space, because the rest of the players are too busy playing in their own ballpens.
I think the only way to dislodge nvidia is to ape their silicon. a USSR needs to come along, steal their masks, and just make carbon copies. not a shim, just straight up copy nvidia 100%. like, you run `nvidia-smi` and it reports back "yep this is a real nvidia card". and then sell it for half the price. it would be totally illegal, but when youre a state actor You Can Just Do Things.
That's all orthogonal to my question. I don't understand where the arm mali drivers are used. Are they used in Android phones? In laptops?
Anything with an ARM Mali family GPU, same as you'd find for the question "where are Nvidia drivers used" as being "anywhere an Nvidia GPU is used". There isn't a premade list of certain people/companies who might ever used a certain brand GPU in their products, it's "just about anywhere". That can be anything including phones, tablets, mini PCs, laptops, SBCs, TV boxes, VR headsets, and so on - it's not limited to use in a specific product/manufacturer/type of device only.
If you're looking for something hackable to play with the Mali driver options on yourself, Chromebooks or SBCs (like the one in the article) are usually the easiest bet and where the development is done vs the more fixed-by-manufacturer type devices like the typical phone where you get what they decide to package (which may or may not be the particular open driver you're looking to see used).
So Chromebooks and TVs. Got it.
Hmm, not really. As mentioned above, anything including phones, tablets, mini PCs, laptops, SBCs, TV boxes, VR headsets, and so on. Chromebooks and TVs would just be 2 examples of these types of devices.
As a solid example, the screenshots from the article are not taken from a Chromebook or TV :).
this 'layer' exists for all linux gpu drivers, and this one is specific to certain Arm Mali gpus
ie radv/radeonsi would be the analogue for amd, honeykrisp/asahi for apple, freedreno for qualcomm etc
Who even uses these arm mali GPUs?
Android phones most likely.
Do they use Linux drivers? You'd think that the device manufacturers would supply those
The drivers are either Linux drivers, or Treble drivers, anyway the question was about who uses these GPUs.