ml-explore / ml-explore/mlx

Wishlist: Vulkan backend for Linux

Open
#1,751 5 comments 9 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement low priority wontfix
Dominant language
C++
Stars
28.5k
Forks
2.3k
Avg merge
3d 8h
Merged PRs (30d)
62

Description

The Asahi Linux project has shipped Vulkan drivers for the M chips. Adding support for this stack would allow better cluster management (e.g. exo) for multi machine mlx setups. It would also, in theory, allow running AI models on other unified memory hardware with Linux support, such as AMD APUs. This would actually fulfill a major design goal of Vulkan (and its AMD ancestor Mantle) by providing a common library for unified compute, without the overhead of OpenCL.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named in the issue. Start by mapping MLX's existing backend structure and determining the Linux Vulkan integration scope; done would mean a working Vulkan backend for Linux that supports the described unified-memory use cases.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, linux
Domain
backend, machine-learning
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.