# Mesa's NOCL Project Brings OpenCL Support Atop NVIDIA CUDA

> **Key takeaway:** The NOCL project implements the Mesa Gallium3D API on top of NVIDIA's CUDA driver API, providing an open-source OpenCL option for the official NVIDIA Linux driver.

**Published:** 2026-10-07T21:25:00+00:00 
**Source:** Khronos Group (Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenCL) 
**Category:** open-hardware 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/mesas-nocl-project-brings-opencl-support-atop-nvidia-cuda.html 

## Summary
The NOCL project, formerly known as CLUDA, has been in development for the past year and provides a compute-only Gallium driver for use with the NVIDIA proprietary driver. This driver uses the NVIDIA CUDA driver and leverages the NVIDIA PTX representation. The project aims to provide an open-source OpenCL option for the official NVIDIA Linux driver and supports more OpenCL extensions than the NVIDIA OpenCL proprietary driver.

## What's Changing with NOCL
- NOCL provides an open-source OpenCL option for the official NVIDIA Linux driver
- Supports more OpenCL extensions than the NVIDIA OpenCL proprietary driver
- Uses the NVIDIA CUDA driver and leverages the NVIDIA PTX representation

## Why it matters
The NOCL project can be useful for performance comparisons and as a development exercise around the NVIDIA PTX IR, and its PTX-to-NIR support will be important for the likes of DLSS with the NVK Mesa driver.