--- title: An overview of the Panfrost driver | daily.dev description: Significant progress has been made on the open source Arm Mali GPU driver front with the Panfrost driver, targeting Mali T and G-series GPUs (Midgard and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: An overview of the Panfrost driver | daily.dev og:description: Significant progress has been made on the open source Arm Mali GPU driver front with the Panfrost driver, targeting Mali T and G-series GPUs (Midgard and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/RXsIstwIK.png og:image:alt: An overview of the Panfrost driver og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # An overview of the Panfrost driver **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Significant progress has been made on the open source Arm Mali GPU driver front with the Panfrost driver, targeting Mali T and G-series GPUs (Midgard and Bifrost architectures). The driver has two parallel development tracks: a new kernel driver intended to replace Arm's proprietary mali_kbase driver and expose the DRM API, and a Mesa userspace driver built on the Gallium framework using NIR intermediate representation. Panfrost can already run kmscube, the Weston desktop, and glmark2 benchmarks. The NIR and Gallium foundations mean features from other drivers can be ported to Panfrost relatively easily, including future OpenCL support. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why can't the Arm mali_kbase kernel driver be accepted into the upstream Linux kernel? The Arm-provided mali_kbase driver cannot be accepted into the upstream Linux kernel primarily because it does not expose the DRM API that userspace expects of modern GPU drivers. This is why the Panfrost project is developing a new kernel driver as a replacement. _Developers working on embedded Linux GPU support track upstream driver acceptance news on daily.dev._ ### What Mesa frameworks does the Panfrost driver use and why does it matter? Panfrost is built on Mesa's Gallium driver framework and uses the NIR intermediate representation for its compiler. This means features from other Gallium/NIR drivers can be ported to Panfrost with relative ease, including future capabilities like OpenCL support. _Engineers porting GPU features across Mesa drivers follow Panfrost and Mesa developments on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Mesa's Rusticl Now Enables Arm Mali Panfrost Driver Support By Default](https://daily.dev/posts/mesa-s-rusticl-now-enables-arm-mali-panfrost-driver-support-by-default-itpmna5qe) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Prominent Mesa Developer Now Working For Arm On PanVK & Panfrost Code](https://daily.dev/posts/prominent-mesa-developer-now-working-for-arm-on-panvk-panfrost-code-xsqflqtlc) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Rust-Based Arm GPU Kernel Driver "Tyr" Begins Running GNOME & Basic Games](https://daily.dev/posts/rust-based-arm-gpu-kernel-driver-tyr-begins-running-gnome-basic-games-8w2bxxznp) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Arm Posts Initial Open-Source Driver Patches For New Mali-G1 GPUs](https://daily.dev/posts/arm-posts-initial-open-source-driver-patches-for-new-mali-g1-gpus-tcm2wklus) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Open-Source NVIDIA "Nova" Driver Sees More Functionality For Linux 7.3](https://daily.dev/posts/open-source-nvidia-nova-driver-sees-more-functionality-for-linux-7-3-hijym86mc) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#mesa](https://daily.dev/tags/mesa) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"An overview of the Panfrost driver","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:57:08.934Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:43:53.064Z","description":"Significant progress has been made on the open source Arm Mali GPU driver front with the Panfrost driver, targeting Mali T and G-series GPUs (Midgard and...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/80be65d70bf542c5d3430ce064343d65?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/80be65d70bf542c5d3430ce064343d65?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collabora Blog","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collabora Blog","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--ZGZ0FjqS--/f_auto,q_auto/v1786438306/logos/collabora?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collabora"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"linux,mesa","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collabora Blog","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collabora"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"An overview of the Panfrost driver"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/an-overview-of-the-panfrost-driver-rxsistwik#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why can't the Arm mali_kbase kernel driver be accepted into the upstream Linux kernel?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The Arm-provided mali_kbase driver cannot be accepted into the upstream Linux kernel primarily because it does not expose the DRM API that userspace expects of modern GPU drivers. 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