Running the unmodified Linux amdgpu driver on an iPad

LemonSeed Studio is a single iPad app that embeds an unmodified upstream Linux amdgpu + amdkfd driver as a PCIDriverKit extension to drive an AMD GPU housed in a Thunderbolt enclosure, enabling on-device LLM inference. It bundles three primary pieces: mac_linuxgpu (the upstream Linux GPU driver), LemonSeed Engine (the inference engine that executes models on the GPU via the HSA runtime and HRX/Loom), and AMDGPU_MTOPG (live GPU telemetry). The project demonstrates that the stock Linux amdgpu stack can be repackaged and run on iPadOS hardware to provide local GPU-accelerated model inference and real-time monitoring.

The repository structures those components as submodules under third_party (mac_linuxgpu, LSE, amdgpu_mtopg) and includes Engine, Studio, Toolchain, docs and build metadata. Source fetch uses git clone with recurse-submodules or git submodule update --init; mac_linuxgpu fetches its own pinned Linux sources sparsely on first build, so recursive cloning of the nested kernel submodule is unnecessary. Licensing is explicit: original code is available under MIT or GPL-2.0-only at user option, while bundled submodules retain their own licenses. The project is active with a substantial commit history and pragmatic build notes focused on reproducible, driver-level GPU support for iPad LLM workloads.