`rust-GPU` and `rust-CUDA` fall in the category to me of "Rust is great, let's build the X ecosystem in rust". Meanwhile, it's been in a broken and dormant state for years. There was a leadership/dev change recently, (Are the creators of VectorWare the creators of Rust-CUDA, or the new leaders?), and more activity. I haven't tried since.
If you have a Rust application or library and want to use the GPU, these approaches are comparatively smooth:
- WGPU: Great for 3D graphics
- Ash and other Vulkan bindings: Low-level graphics bindings
- Cudarc: Nice API for running CUDA kernels.
I am using WGPU and Cudarc for structural biology + molecular dynamics computations, and they work well.
Rust - CUDA feels like lots-of-PR, but not as good of a toolkit as these quieter alternatives. What would be cool for them to deliver, and I think is in their objectives: Cross-API abstractions, so you could, for example, write code that runs on Vulkan Compute in addition to CUDA.
Something else that would be cool: High-level bindings to cuFFT and vkFFT. You can FFI them currently, but that's not ideal. (Not too bad to impl though, if you're familiar with FFI syntax and the `cc` crate)
Yes, it is all these folks getting together and getting resources to push those projects to the next level: https://www.vectorware.com/team/
wgpu, ash, and cudarc are great. We're focusing on the actual code that runs on the GPU in Rust, and we work with those projects. We have cust in rust-cuda, but that existed before cudarc and we have been seriously discussing just killing it in favor of cudarc.
If you have a Rust application or library and want to use the GPU, these approaches are comparatively smooth:
I am using WGPU and Cudarc for structural biology + molecular dynamics computations, and they work well.Rust - CUDA feels like lots-of-PR, but not as good of a toolkit as these quieter alternatives. What would be cool for them to deliver, and I think is in their objectives: Cross-API abstractions, so you could, for example, write code that runs on Vulkan Compute in addition to CUDA.
Something else that would be cool: High-level bindings to cuFFT and vkFFT. You can FFI them currently, but that's not ideal. (Not too bad to impl though, if you're familiar with FFI syntax and the `cc` crate)