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A new open-source Linux driver announced today by Arm is the Arm Core Local Accelerator “CLA” driver as a CPU-local interface for programming attached accelerators. This is an agnostic interface for attached accelerators with the initial target focusing on an attached compute engine.
Arm engineer Ryan Roberts explained of this new Arm Core Local Accelerator driver in the request for comments (RFC) announcement:
“This RFC introduces a driver for the Arm Core Local Accelerator (CLA), a CPU-local interface for programming attached accelerators. While the interface is agnostic to the accelerator type, the initial (and currently only) target is a compute engine.”
Arm CLA supports up to eight attached accelerators. The design also allows supporting cooperation between accelerators.
While Arm published the initial prototype code today for their kernel accelerator driver for the CLA, they do not yet have a user-space driver to share. They are working to open-source their user-space driver but there is no ETA yet on when that will happen.
Those wishing to learn more about the proposed Arm Core Local Accelerator driver for use with future Arm hardware designs can learn more via the RFC kernel patch series.