[Internship] Rust In The Linux Kernel 2026
About SiPearl…
SiPearl is the European fabless designer of sovereign secure high-performance energy-efficient CPUs for HPC, AI and data centres. These CPUs will help address strategic challenges in the fields of security, defence, medical research, energy, climate and engineering with a reduced environmental footprint.
In June 25, SiPearl completed the design of the most complex CPU ever designed in Europe, Rhea1. Featuring 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores, with 61 billion transistors, it is currently in production at TSMC. Sipearl CPUs will equip the two first European exascale supercomputers belonging to EuroHPC JU: Rhea1 will be integrated into the JUPITER machine based in Germany and Rhea2 will be part of Alice Recoque in France.
Incubated within the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium and seed-funded by the European Union, SiPearl employs almost 200 people in :
France (Maisons-Laffitte, Grenoble, Massy, Sophia Antipolis),
Spain (Barcelona)
and Italy (Bologna)
Following a €130 million Series A, the company has launched its Series B round.
Missions
SiPearl is developing the next generation of processors dedicated to European supercomputers. Within the Linux Kernel team, this internship focuses on exploring the use of Rust for Linux by porting an existing performance monitoring driver.
The objective of the internship is to port the SiPearl uncore Performance Monitoring (PM) driver from C to Rust. This driver interacts with DDR and HBM performance counters and exposes them to the Linux perf user-space subsystem.
This internship will start in September 2026.
During this internship, you will:
Analyze the existing C implementation of the SiPearl uncore PM driver
Study how the driver interfaces with DDR and HBM performance counters and the Linux perf subsystem
Design an equivalent architecture using Rust for Linux
Re-implement the core functionalities of the driver in Rust
Test and validate the functional equivalence and performance of the Rust implementation
Document the design and implementation choices for the Linux Kernel team
What makes you a good match for the role
Student in the final year of an engineering school or pursuing a Master's degree in electronics, computer engineering, or a related field
Good understanding of Linux Kernel internals
Good level of Rust programming (with particular focus on unsafe Rust)
Good C knowledge (to understand and translate the existing driver)
Linux kernel development experience (kernel modules, driver model, build system)
Understanding of performance monitoring concepts (PMU, uncore PM drivers, hardware counters)
Familiarity with the Linux perf subsystem
Good written and spoken English
Location -> Castelldefels
