CUDA-oxide: Nvidia's official Rust to CUDA compiler

Source: Hacker News

cuda-oxide is an experimental Rust‑to‑CUDA compiler that lets you write (SIMT) GPU kernels in safe(ish), idiomatic Rust. It compiles standard Rust code directly to PTX — no DSLs, no foreign language bindings, just Rust.

This book assumes familiarity with the Rust programming language, including ownership, traits, and generics. Later chapters on async GPU programming also assume working knowledge of async/.await and runtimes like Tokio.
For a refresher, see The Rust Programming Language, Rust by Example, or the Async Book.

Project Status

The v0.1.0 release is an early‑stage alpha: expect bugs, incomplete features, and API breakage as we work to improve it. We hope you’ll try it and help shape its direction by sharing feedback on your experience.

🚀 Quick start

use cuda_device::{cuda_module, kernel, thread, DisjointSlice};
use cuda_core::{CudaContext, DeviceBuffer, LaunchConfig};

#[cuda_module]
mod kernels {
    use super::*;

    #[kernel]
    fn vecadd(a: &[f32], b: &[f32], mut c: DisjointSlice) {
        let idx = thread::index_1d();
        let i = idx.get();
        if let Some(c_elem) = c.get_mut(idx) {
            *c_elem = a[i] + b[i];
        }
    }
}

fn main() {
    let ctx = CudaContext::new(0).unwrap();
    let stream = ctx.default_stream();
    let module = kernels::load(&ctx).unwrap();

    let a = DeviceBuffer::from_host(&stream, &[1.0f32; 1024]).unwrap();
    let b = DeviceBuffer::from_host(&stream, &[2.0f32; 1024]).unwrap();
    let mut c = DeviceBuffer::::zeroed(&stream, 1024).unwrap();

    module
        .vecadd(&stream, LaunchConfig::for_num_elems(1024), &a, &b, &mut c)
        .unwrap();

    let result = c.to_host_vec(&stream).unwrap();
    assert_eq!(result[0], 3.0);
}

Build and run with cargo oxide run vecadd after installing the prerequisites.

#[cuda_module] embeds the generated device artifact into the host binary and generates a typed kernels::load function plus one launch method per kernel. The lower‑level load_kernel_module and cuda_launch! APIs remain available when you need to load a specific sidecar artifact or build custom launch code.

Why cuda-oxide?

• 🦀 Rust on the GPU – Write GPU kernels with Rust’s type system and ownership model. Safety is a first‑class goal; read about the safety model.
• 💎 A SIMT Compiler – Not a DSL. A custom rustc codegen backend that compiles pure Rust to PTX.
• ⚡ Async Execution – Compose GPU work as lazy DeviceOperation graphs, schedule across stream pools, and await results with .await.