Kraid Mali GPU Compiler: Faster Shaders for RK3588 Boards

Arm single-board computers live or die by their open-source graphics stack, and this week brought a meaningful upgrade for anyone running a Rockchip RK3588 or other Mali-powered board. Collabora announced on October 26, 2026 that Kraid, its new shader compiler for the Panfrost driver stack, is now the default in Mesa's main branch for Mali GPUs using the Valhall v9 architecture or newer. Separately, its Rust-based Tyr kernel driver passed a key boot milestone.

• Default from Mesa 27.0: Kraid replaces the old compiler for Valhall v9+ Mali GPUs; Mesa 26.3 is the last release with the previous compiler
• Smaller shaders: across a set of OpenGL shaders, instruction count fell 18.47%, from 714,433 to 582,468, according to Collabora's testing reported by LinuxGizmos
• Vulkan gains: 84.32% fewer register spills, 78.56% fewer fills, and pipelines compiling about 7x faster while using 35% less memory
• Tyr milestone: the Rust Mali-G610 driver can boot the GPU's microcontroller unit with changes merged into Linux 7.3

Why Collabora Built a New Mali Compiler

Collabora's Faith Ekstrand explained that the previous compiler, originally designed for Arm's Bifrost GPUs, had design limits that made Mali hard to optimize. The biggest one was register access: it could not model swizzle operations accurately, so it emitted many extra instructions that just shuffled data around. Kraid models those operations properly and adds full 64-bit integer arithmetic, which matters for OpenCL compute.

It also keeps code in static single assignment (SSA) form throughout compilation. That lets the compiler estimate register pressure before assigning physical registers, which is where the big drop in spills and fills comes from.

How Much Faster Is Kraid on the RK3588?

Real-world results are encouraging, with a few honest caveats. LinuxGizmos reports Collabora's figures of about 6.5% higher scores in 3DMark Wild Life, 18% in Call of Duty Mobile and 39% in Candy Crush Soda Saga. In clpeak compute tests on the RK3588, some mixed-precision workloads improved by more than 50%, while several single- and half-precision tests came in lower, and Collabora notes some minor regressions in other workloads. That is typical for a brand-new compiler, and it gives the team clear targets before Mesa 27.0 ships.

The faster pipeline compiles may be the change users notice first: games and desktop apps that build Vulkan pipelines on the fly should hitch less on an Arm SBC.

What the Tyr Rust Driver Means for Arm SBCs

Tyr is a Rust port of Panthor, the existing C kernel driver for the Mali-G610 found in the RK3588. Booting the GPU's firmware required new Rust abstractions for memory management in the kernel's DRM subsystem. According to Collabora, the upstream driver is about 3,700 lines of code with only six lines of unsafe Rust, a promising sign for long-term maintainability.

For owners of RK3588 hardware such as the Jetway SMC-ARK1 SMARC module, the takeaway is simple: mainline Linux graphics on Arm keep getting faster without any vendor blob. It also bodes well for the next generation of Mali-based chips like the Rockchip RK3668. Follow our mini computer coverage for more.

Sources: Collabora: Panfrost is now using Kraid — October 26, 2026; LinuxGizmos — October 27, 2026; Collabora: Upstreaming Tyr — October 21, 2026.