Borealis Vulkan driver forks Asahi Linux's Honeykrisp for Apple Silicon
Key Takeaway
The Aurora Silicon project has introduced Borealis, a Mesa-based Vulkan driver fork for Apple Silicon hardware.
Summary
The Aurora Silicon project is developing Borealis, a Vulkan driver for Apple GPUs that forks the Honeykrisp driver from Asahi Linux. The driver is intended to support M1 through M5 chips and the A18 Pro. Unlike Honeykrisp, Borealis will be maintained in a custom Mesa fork rather than upstream Mesa.
Technical details of Borealis
- Registers a new driver ID: VK_DRIVER_ID_AURORA_BOREALIS (35).
- Derived from the Honeykrisp driver used in Asahi Linux.
- Targets Apple Silicon hardware including M1 to M5 and A18 Pro.
- Maintained as a separate fork of Mesa rather than upstreaming to the main project.
- Includes updated policies regarding AI agent/assistant contributions.
Why it matters
The project aims to provide a complete Linux experience on Apple Silicon and is also exploring Windows ports for the same hardware.
Original reference: www.phoronix.com →