NVIDIA introduces cuda rust tools for safe GPU kernel development

NVIDIA has launched CUDA Rust, a new initiative aimed at integrating Rust as a primary language for GPU kernel development. The project includes two open-source tools: cuda-oxide for the SIMT model and cutile-rs for the Tile model. Both tools compile Rust kernels natively and leverage Rust’s ownership model to prevent aliasing bugs at compile time. cutile-rs is already available on crates.io and is used in Hugging Face’s Grout and mistral.rs, while cuda-oxide is in early alpha. NVIDIA emphasizes the Tile model as the preferred approach, with SIMT for explicit control. The tools support Linux, CUDA 12.x or newer, and specific toolchains. The safety features include DisjointSlice types and ownership checks to prevent aliasing issues. The Tile model avoids shared memory misuse, while SIMT retains control but requires unsafe code for shared memory.