Claude Code Instructions

project: unimem

pure Rust memory driver for Apple Silicon. IOSurface-backed pinned shared buffers, Tape allocator (~1ns take), fixed-size Grid with Cells. zero-copy sharing between CPU, GPU, AMX, and ANE.

role in the stack

unimem is a hardware memory driver. it allocates and manages buffers. it does NOT run compute, compile shaders, build graphs, or schedule ops.

unimem       memory: IOSurface, Block, Tape, Grid
acpu         driver: CPU/AMX compute (NEON, AMX inline asm)
aruminium    driver: Metal GPU compute (shaders, pipelines)
rane         driver: ANE hardware (MIL compile, dispatch)
  ↑ drivers — raw hardware access, no model knowledge
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ↓ runtimes — model graphs, scheduling, inference logic
cyb/llm      runtime: graph IR, jets, scheduling, model loading

all inference logic (attention blocks, transformer layers, model loading, op scheduling, graph optimization) belongs in the runtime layer (https://github.com/cyberia-to/cyb), not in the drivers.

drivers expose raw capabilities. runtimes compose them.

architecture

src/
  lib.rs          public API: Block, Tape, Grid, Cell, Layout, Stat, MemError
  ffi.rs          IOSurface + CoreFoundation raw FFI
  block.rs        Block: pinned IOSurface, locked at creation
  tape.rs         Tape: Turing tape bump allocator (~1ns take, 0.3ns clear)
  grid.rs         Grid/Cell: fixed-size cell grid over Tape
  layout.rs       Layout: three-tape inference layout (weights/scratch/history)

source of truth

specs/ is canonical. if specs/ and code disagree, resolve in specs/ first, then propagate to code.

build & verify

cargo build
cargo test
cargo bench
cargo run --example pipeline --release

no special signing. no entitlements. no SIP changes.

key gotchas

• IOSurface locked once at creation, unlocked at drop. address stable for lifetime.
• Tape take is compare_exchange loop, not fetch_add (no space waste on overshoot).
• Apple Silicon uses 16KB kernel pages, not 4KB.
• Block is Send+Sync (immutable after creation). Tape is Send+Sync (atomic head).
• Grid Cell has lifetime tied to Grid — compile-time use-after-free prevention.
• IOSurfaceRef from block.handle() is directly compatible with rane and aruminium.

sibling drivers

• acpu (https://github.com/cyberia-to/acpu) — CPU/AMX: matmul_f32, softmax, normalize, rotate, silu
• aruminium (https://github.com/cyberia-to/aruminium) — Metal GPU: shaders, buffers, compute
• rane (https://github.com/cyberia-to/rane) — ANE: MIL compile, load, run

coding conventions

• raw FFI to IOSurface.framework and CoreFoundation. no objc2, no wrapper crates.
• cargo fmt enforced. clippy clean.
• unsafe confined to ffi.rs and Block/Tape internals.

git workflow

• atomic commits — one logical change per commit
• conventional prefixes: feat:, fix:, refactor:, docs:, test:, chore:
• commit by default after completing a change

license

cyber license: don't trust. don't fear. don't beg.