Topics / #low-level
Low-level projects on GitHub
Systems programming close to hardware and memory.
As of , the most-starred Low-level projects on GitHub are linux (252.6K stars), rust (120.6K stars) and Apollo-11 (75.4K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 95 Low-level repositories with 1.3M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 18 was AhmadHassan-BTed, with +1K stars in a day.
Hot right now
Most stars gained in a day · Oct 18
AhmadHassan-BTed
AhmadHassan-BTed/AhmadHassan-BTed · ★ 1.2KThis is the special GitHub profile repository for AhmadHassan-BTed: a terminal-style dashboard that renders interactive workspace statistics and system diagnostics as an SVG, cataloging the author's codebase footprint, in the style of tools like neofetch.
+551EQAI
AhmadHassan-BTed/EQAI · ★ 742This is a reverse-engineering pipeline that transplants the original EverQuest Online Adventures (EQOA) character geometry into the EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers PS2 client, fixing engine-level bugs like VU1 shader errors, Emotion Engine memory overflows, and CDVD hardware faults so the original models load correctly.
+216linux
torvalds/linux · ★ 252.6KThis is the Linux kernel itself - the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware and system resources and provides the fundamental services all other software runs on.
+120OpenPS2BIOS
TamaribaEmu/OpenPS2BIOS · ★ 177OpenPS2BIOS is an experimental open-source replacement BIOS for the PlayStation 2, built for use with emulators and tested against PCSX2.
The all-time top
95 projects · by stars
- 252.6K
#1 · torvalds/linuxlinux
This is the Linux kernel itself - the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware and system resources and provides the fundamental services all other software runs on.
- 120.6K
#2 · rust-lang/rustrust
This is the main source repository for the Rust programming language — it contains the compiler (rustc), the standard library, and documentation.
- 75.4K
#3 · chrislgarry/Apollo-11Apollo-11
The original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code: the 1969 flight software for the Command Module (Comanche055) and the Lunar Module (Luminary099).
- 4
carbon-lang
33.9Kcarbon-language/carbon-lang · C++An experimental successor language to C++: C++-level performance, seamless interop with existing C++ code, and modern, safer foundations. This repo holds its documents, design, and toolchain implementation.
- 5

linux-insides
33.7K0xAX/linux-insides · PythonThis is a free, work-in-progress book that explains the internals of the Linux kernel, covering topics like booting, memory management, and system calls in deep technical detail.
- 6

MS-DOS
32.3Kmicrosoft/MS-DOS · AssemblyThe original source code of MS-DOS v1.25, v2.0, and v4.00, published by Microsoft for reference. The v1.25 and v2.0 parts include compiled binaries too, and v4.00 was jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft.
- 7

os-tutorial
30.8Kcfenollosa/os-tutorial · CA step-by-step tutorial that walks you through building a small operating system from scratch, starting at the boot sector and moving up to a basic kernel.
- 8

v8
25.3Kv8/v8 · C++V8 is Google's open source JavaScript engine, written in C++. This repository is the official mirror of the V8 Git repository.
- 9
simdjson
24.4Ksimdjson/simdjson · C++A C++ library that parses JSON at gigabytes-per-second speed using SIMD instructions and microparallel algorithms. It ships in production systems like Node.js, ClickHouse and Meta Velox.
- 10

How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System
22.4KSamyPesse/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System · CThis is a free online book that walks you through writing a simple UNIX-based operating system in C++ from scratch.
- 11

ish
20.6Kish-app/ish · CiSH is an open-source iOS app that gives you a Linux shell on your iPhone or iPad. It emulates an x86 processor in usermode and translates Linux syscalls, so Linux command-line programs run on iOS as they are.
- 12

Atmosphere
20.1KAtmosphere-NX/Atmosphere · C++Atmosphère is a work-in-progress custom firmware (CFW) for the Nintendo Switch that replaces and patches core parts of the console's Horizon OS to add new features and customization.
- 13
swoole-src
18.9Kswoole/swoole-src · C++Swoole is an event-driven, asynchronous, coroutine-based concurrency library for PHP, built for high performance.
- 14

reactos
18.3Kreactos/reactos · CA free, open-source operating system (GNU GPL 2.0) built to run the applications and drivers written for the Windows NT family, from NT4 through 7; compatibility work currently focuses on Windows Server 2003.
- 15

blog_os
17.8Kphil-opp/blog_os · HTMLSource code for the 'Writing an OS in Rust' blog series at os.phil-opp.com - step-by-step posts that build a small x86-64 operating system kernel in Rust.
- 16

mold
17.7Krui314/mold · Rustmold is a high-performance drop-in replacement for the standard Unix linker, built for one thing: making the link step of large C, C++ and Rust builds several times faster.
- 17

open-gpu-kernel-modules
17.5KNVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules · CThis is NVIDIA's official source release of the open-source Linux GPU kernel modules (nvidia.ko, nvidia-drm.ko, nvidia-modeset.ko, nvidia-uvm.ko) for Turing and newer GPUs.
- 18
kcp
16.9Kskywind3000/kcp · CKCP is a fast, reliable ARQ protocol for realtime traffic: it trades 10-20% extra bandwidth for 30-40% lower average latency and up to 3x lower maximum latency than TCP.
- 19
zephyr
16.8Kzephyrproject-rtos/zephyr · CZephyr is an open source real-time operating system (RTOS) — a small-footprint kernel for resource-constrained embedded devices, supporting many hardware architectures and built with security in mind.
- 20

hyper
16.4Khyperium/hyper · Rusthyper is an HTTP library for Rust. It ships both client and server APIs, supporting HTTP/1 and HTTP/2.
- 21

muduo
16.3Kchenshuo/muduo · C++Muduo is a multithreaded C++ network library based on the reactor pattern, built for writing high-performance, event-driven servers on Linux.
- 22
impacket
16.2Kfortra/impacket · PythonImpacket is a collection of Python classes for working with network protocols, giving low-level programmatic access to packets and, for some protocols like SMB1-3 and MSRPC, full protocol implementations.
- 23

OpenCorePkg
15.6Kacidanthera/OpenCorePkg · COpenCorePkg is OpenCore, a UEFI bootloader bundled with a development SDK, best known for booting and patching macOS on non-Apple hardware, while also providing shared UEFI libraries used by other Acidanthera projects.
- 24

ggml
15.5Kggml-org/ggml · C++ggml is a plain C/C++ tensor library built for running machine learning models with minimal setup, no external dependencies, and support for CPU, GPU, NPU, and browser backends. It's the core engine that powers projects like llama.cpp.
- 25

nuklear
14Kvurtun/nuklear · CNuklear is a minimal state immediate mode graphical user interface toolkit written in ANSI C (C89) and released into the public domain, meant to be embedded into your application.
- 26

qemu
13.9Kqemu/qemu · CQEMU is a generic and open source machine and userspace emulator and virtualizer — software that lets one computer run systems and programs built for a completely different one.
- 27

os01
13.8Ktuhdo/os01 · TeXIt's a free book, 'Operating Systems: From 0 to 1', that walks a self-learner through the foundational knowledge needed to write an operating system from scratch.
- 28
runc
13.5Kopencontainers/runc · Gorunc is a command-line tool for spawning and running containers on Linux according to the OCI (Open Container Initiative) specification.
- 29

linux
13.3Kraspberrypi/linux · CThis is Raspberry Pi's own Linux kernel source tree: the code its official Pi kernels are built from, with Pi-specific drivers and patches carried on top of the mainline Linux kernel.
- 30

tiny-gpu
13.1Kadam-maj/tiny-gpu · SystemVerilogtiny-gpu is a minimal GPU design written in Verilog (SystemVerilog) built purely to teach how GPU architecture works from the ground up, covering core concepts like SIMD parallelization, memory bandwidth management, and instruction execution.
- 31

cJSON
13KDaveGamble/cJSON · CAn ultralightweight JSON parser written in plain ANSI C. The whole thing is one C file and one header, with the stated goal of being the dumbest parser that still gets your job done.
- 32

lowlevelprogramming-university
12.8Kgurugio/lowlevelprogramming-universityA curated roadmap for learning low-level programming (assembly, C, Rust, embedded systems, Linux kernel), inspired by google-interview-university. It is a single long README with links to books, courses, and projects organized by topic.
- 33

coreclr
12.8Kdotnet/coreclrCoreCLR is the runtime for .NET Core — the component that actually executes .NET Core programs. It ships the garbage collector, the JIT compiler, primitive data types and low-level classes.
- 34

sanitizers
12.5Kgoogle/sanitizers · CA family of runtime checkers that catch memory errors and data races in C and C++ code: AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, ThreadSanitizer, LeakSanitizer and more. This repo is their archived documentation hub.
- 35

asm-lessons
12.2KFFmpeg/asm-lessonsThis is the FFmpeg School of Assembly Language — a free course that teaches how assembly language (including SIMD code) is written inside FFmpeg, so you understand what's actually happening in your computer at the hardware level.
- 36

Odin
12.2Kodin-lang/Odin · OdinOdin is a general-purpose, data-oriented programming language built for high performance and modern systems programming, positioned as an alternative to C.
- 37

klipper
12KKlipper3d/klipper · CKlipper is firmware that controls 3D printers by combining a general-purpose computer (like a Raspberry Pi) with one or more micro-controllers on the printer board.
- 38

Dependencies
11.9Klucasg/Dependencies · C#Dependencies is an open-source, modern replacement for Dependency Walker — a Windows tool that helps developers troubleshoot DLL load dependency issues by showing what an executable or library needs to load.
- 39

pics
11.5Kcorkami/pics · AssemblyA gallery of visual dissections of binary file formats: annotated posters, tracings and outlines that map how binary files are structured inside.
- 40

gcc
11.3Kgcc-mirror/gcc · C++This is the official source tree of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection — a suite of free compilers maintained as part of the GNU project.
- 41

darwin-xnu
11.3Kapple/darwin-xnu · CThis is the source code of the XNU kernel, the core of Darwin, the operating system behind macOS and iOS. It is the kernel that ships on Apple devices, published as source for reading, building and debugging.
- 42

jemalloc
11.2Kjemalloc/jemalloc · Cjemalloc is a general purpose malloc(3) implementation — a memory allocator for C programs — emphasizing fragmentation avoidance and scalable concurrency support.
- 43

pwndbg
11.1Kpwndbg/pwndbg · PythonA plug-in for GDB and LLDB that makes debugging far less painful for low-level developers, hardware hackers, reverse-engineers and exploit developers — it adds the utilities vanilla debuggers are missing.
- 44

rr
10.7Krr-debugger/rr · C++rr is a lightweight tool that records the execution of an application — entire trees of processes and threads — and lets you replay and debug that recording.
- 45

reverse-engineering
10.6KwtsxDev/reverse-engineeringA curated list of reverse engineering resources: books, courses, practice grounds, and a big toolbox section spanning hex editors, disassemblers, debuggers, and dynamic analysis tools.
- 46

ZygiskNext
10.6KDr-TSNG/ZygiskNext · CZygisk Next is a standalone, native reimplementation of the Zygisk API: it brings Magisk-style Zygisk module support to KernelSU and can also replace Magisk's own built-in Zygisk.
- 47
libgit2
10.6Klibgit2/libgit2 · Clibgit2 is a portable, pure C implementation of the Git core methods, shipped as a linkable library with a solid API so applications can build Git functionality right in.
- 48

cutlass
10.6KNVIDIA/cutlass · C++NVIDIA's collection of C++ CUDA templates and Python DSLs for writing high-performance matrix-matrix multiplication (GEMM) and other linear algebra kernels on NVIDIA GPUs — the standard toolkit for that since 2017.
- 49

WSL2-Linux-Kernel
10.6Kmicrosoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel · CThis is the official source repository for the Linux kernel that powers WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2), including the kernel source code and configuration files used by Microsoft.
- 50

db_tutorial
10.5Kcstack/db_tutorial · CThis is a hands-on tutorial that walks through writing a SQLite clone from scratch in C, teaching how a real database works internally by building one chapter by chapter.
- 51

nom
10.5Krust-bakery/nom · Rustnom is a parser combinator library for Rust: you build safe parsers by composing small functions, without giving up speed or memory efficiency.
- 52

lua
10.4Klua/lua · CThis is the official development mirror of the Lua programming language's source code, showing the full commit history as maintained by the Lua team, though it is updated irregularly.
- 53
bpftrace
10.4Kbpftrace/bpftrace · C++bpftrace is a high-level tracing language and tool for Linux: it uses eBPF to trace the kernel and user applications with minimal overhead.
- 54
raddebugger
8.6KEpicGames/raddebugger · CRAD Debugger is a native, user-mode, multi-process graphical debugger from Epic Games/RAD. It also comes with two related tools: the RAD Debug Info (RDI) format and the RAD Linker, a fast x64 PE/COFF linker.
- 55

ANE
7.3Kmaderix/ANE · Objective-CANE is a research project that trains neural networks directly on Apple's Neural Engine using reverse-engineered private APIs, instead of CoreML's inference-only path.
- 56

mquickjs
6.2Kbellard/mquickjs · CMicroQuickJS (MQuickJS) is a JavaScript engine built for embedded systems, able to run JS programs using as little as 10 kB of RAM and about 100 kB of ROM, with speed comparable to full QuickJS.
- 57

porffor
5.3KCanadaHonk/porffor · JavaScriptPorffor is an ahead-of-time JavaScript compiler: a 100% AOT compiled JS engine and runtime. Nothing in it interprets or just-in-time compiles your code.
- 58

src
3.9Kopenbsd/src · CA read-only git mirror of the official source tree of OpenBSD, the open-source Unix-like operating system — converted from the project's original CVS repository so the full source can be browsed and cloned on GitHub.
- 59

PS2Recomp
3.6Kran-j/PS2Recomp · C++PS2Recomp statically recompiles PlayStation 2 ELF binaries into C++ source code and ships a runtime to execute that generated code, letting you build native PC ports of PS2 games.
- 60

nvidia-macos-driver
3.4Knullmoth/nvidia-macos-driver · RustA free, open-source Metal driver that lets NVIDIA Turing-and-later GeForce/RTX/Quadro cards act as a fully supported GPU on Intel Macs running macOS 15 Sequoia via OpenCore, covering desktop rendering, Metal apps, games, Core ML/MPS and OpenCL.
- 61

vinix
2.7Kvlang/vinix · VVinix is an effort to write a modern, fast, and useful operating system in the V programming language — a hobby OS project that also feeds improvements back into the V compiler.
- 62

ReBarUEFI
2.6KxCuri0/ReBarUEFI · CReBarUEFI is a UEFI DXE driver that enables Resizable BAR on systems whose firmware doesn't support it officially — a free performance boost, mostly noticeable in games.
- 63

skitter-creek-bath-salts
2.2Kxoreaxeaxeax/skitter-creek-bath-salts · CA security research project that shows how to unlock protected regions on an AMD CPU — the Platform Security Processor, System Management Mode, C6 DRAM, and CPU microcode — by scrambling the DRAM controller's physical-to-DRAM address translation.
- 64
compio
1.9Kcompio-rs/compio · RustCompio is a thread-per-core async Rust runtime that uses completion-based IO backends (IOCP on Windows, io_uring on Linux, polling elsewhere) instead of the poll-based model most runtimes use.
- 65

BRUTAL
1.9Kahwootech/BRUTAL · C#BRUTAL is a free, open source C# framework for building games or your own game engine, giving C# direct access to native APIs and Vulkan plus the low-level libraries around them (memory, maths, collections, job scheduling, and more).
- 66

NoGraphicsAPI
1.6Ksebbbi/NoGraphicsAPI · C++NoGraphicsAPI is an experimental Vulkan 1.4 implementation of Sebastian Aaltonen's 'No Graphics API' idea, exploring what disappears from a conventional graphics API when shaders use raw 64-bit GPU pointers instead of buffer objects and bindings.
- 67
AhmadHassan-BTed
1.2KAhmadHassan-BTed/AhmadHassan-BTed · PythonThis is the special GitHub profile repository for AhmadHassan-BTed: a terminal-style dashboard that renders interactive workspace statistics and system diagnostics as an SVG, cataloging the author's codebase footprint, in the style of tools like neofetch.
- 68

darwin-vm
1.2Kjprx/darwin-vm · Shelldarwin-vm boots iOS or macOS (Darwin) inside QEMU straight to a root shell, so you can debug the kernel, edit the filesystem, and run your own custom programs. It supports emulating iPhone 12-17 (A14-A19) and M1-M5 Macs.
- 69

cpu-performance-engineering
1.2Kusamahz/cpu-performance-engineering · PythonA curated reading path for CPU performance engineering: it walks you from what one instruction does on a modern core to serving ML inference on CPUs, ordered so each piece makes the next one legible.
- 70

marisa-trie
1.1Kpytries/marisa-trie · CythonStatic, memory-efficient trie-like data structures for Python, built on the marisa-trie C++ library. Strings stored inside can take up to 50x-100x less memory than in a standard Python dict, with comparable lookup speed and fast prefix search.
- 71

compiler
939edgcpp/compiler · CThis is the open-source EDG C/C++ compiler front end project: a parser and semantic analyzer for C and C++ that is famous for matching Clang, GCC, and MSVC's parsing behavior (including their quirks) so vendors can embed it in their own tools.
- 72

EQAI
742AhmadHassan-BTed/EQAI · PythonThis is a reverse-engineering pipeline that transplants the original EverQuest Online Adventures (EQOA) character geometry into the EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers PS2 client, fixing engine-level bugs like VU1 shader errors, Emotion Engine memory overflows, and CDVD hardware faults so the original models load correctly.
- 73

wcdb-key-tool
661TANGandXUE/wcdb-key-tool · PythonA single-purpose Python tool that pulls the encryption keys out of WeChat's local WCDB/SQLCipher4 chat databases on Linux, macOS and Windows, so you can decrypt your own chat history.
- 74

solo
642pg83/solo · C++SoLo is a C/C++ library that lets a single, fully static musl-linked Linux executable load the host's existing glibc-linked shared objects, such as GPU drivers, at runtime, instead of bundling a container, AppImage, or a second libc.
- 75

goose
613aardappel/goose · C++Goose is a memory-safe systems programming language with no heap allocator, garbage collector, or lifetime annotations. In its own benchmarks it runs faster than C++ and safe Rust while using less memory.
- 76

DeepGEMM-Ascend
588deepseek-ai/DeepGEMM-Ascend · C++DeepGEMM-Ascend is a port of DeepSeek's DeepGEMM matrix-multiplication kernel library to Huawei Ascend NPUs, fully API-compatible with the original and supporting BF16, FP8, and FP4 GEMM along with MQA logits and MegaMoE operators.
- 77
apex-inference-chip
581SigmanticAI/apex-inference-chip · PythonAPEX is an open, verification-first hardware design for LLM inference: one transformer decoder layer written in real RTL that runs Qwen2.5-0.5B on an FPGA, with every circuit block checked bit-exact against a software golden model.
- 78

selfdb
572fzakaria/selfdb · Pythonselfdb (SELF, Structured Executable & Linkable Format) makes a program that is literally a SQLite database instead of an ELF binary, plus the loader machinery to actually execute that database on Linux/NixOS.
- 79

Jet
538CubeCoders/Jet · C++Jet is a tiny, dependency-free, fixed-function 3D software rasteriser in C++17, built for embedded chips with little CPU and RAM like the ESP32 and STM32; it also runs on desktop PCs and Raspberry Pi.
- 80
ir
509dstogov/ir · CIR is a lightweight framework for building JIT compilers in medium-size projects. It gives you an intermediate representation, an API to construct it, and passes for optimization, scheduling, register allocation and machine code generation that can be executed directly in memory.
- 81

virtio-nvgpu
431nestrilabs/virtio-nvgpu · RustA virtio device that shares one NVIDIA GPU across several KVM virtual machines at near-bare-metal speed, by forwarding kernel-driver ioctls instead of translating graphics APIs. The target use case is headless streaming: the guest renders and encodes on the GPU, and only compressed video leaves.
- 82

PCILeechGen
400sercanarga/PCILeechGen · GoPCILeechGen is a CLI tool that generates custom firmware for PCILeech FPGA boards. It reads a real donor PCI/PCIe device through VFIO, clones its identity (config space, BARs, capabilities), and produces a ready-to-flash .bin bitstream via Vivado.
- 83

edrEvasionWorkshop
397tyeurada/edrEvasionWorkshopWorkshop materials from DEF CON 34 and BSidesLV 2026 on writing custom malware that evades EDR — from loaders to kernel-level techniques.
- 84

re4
352adonis-singh/re4 · C++A complete, byte-identical decompilation of Resident Evil 4 for GameCube — the G4BE08 debug build, both discs — reconstructed as readable C/C++ that rebuilds the exact original binaries.
- 85

ftl
304nuta/ftl · RustFTL is a new operating system written in Rust that aims to be an alternative to Linux, BSD, and Illumos specifically for cloud environments.
- 86

bad_query
276forcequitOS/bad_query · Cbadquery is a proof-of-concept sandbox escape for iOS 26 and 27, written in C — code that demonstrates breaking out of the iOS app sandbox.
- 87

m4-sme-exploration
245tzakharko/m4-sme-exploration · CA research project that microbenchmarks the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) of Apple's M4 chip, measuring peak compute throughput for common matrix and vector operations and memory transfer rates.
- 88

PSPRecomp
232jessicanataliagta/PSPRecomp · C++This is PSPRecomp, a static recompilation framework for PSP (PlayStation Portable) software. It reads an Allegrex/MIPS executable, analyzes the guest code, and emits C++ translation units that run on a native host runtime instead of using a PSP interpreter or JIT.
- 89

OpenPS2BIOS
177TamaribaEmu/OpenPS2BIOS · COpenPS2BIOS is an experimental open-source replacement BIOS for the PlayStation 2, built for use with emulators and tested against PCSX2.
- 90

CalcKernel
152luxine/CalcKernel · RustCalcKernel (CK) is a statically typed language for writing focused numerical computation kernels that a larger application calls into, rather than a full application-level language.
- 91

GoodmansKernel
152zer0condition/GoodmansKernel · CGoodmansKernel is a signed Windows kernel-mode driver that embeds the wasm3 interpreter, letting you load unsigned .wasm modules and run them inside the kernel with direct FFI access to nt/hal exports. You write kernel logic in C or Rust, compile it to wasm32, load it into the driver, and iterate without re-signing each payload.
- 92

zxdesk
141mindbox77/zxdesk · AssemblyZxDesk is a graphical desktop environment for the 48K ZX Spectrum, written entirely in Z80 assembly, with overlapping windows, pull-down menus, a file manager, a notepad, clock and calendar, all running natively on the machine.
- 93
Cobalt64
139Almosst-DEV/Cobalt64 · C++Cobalt64 is an open-source GPU driver that brings native Metal acceleration to modern AMD Radeon GPUs macOS doesn't officially support, starting with the RX 9070 XT (RDNA4, Navi 48).
- 94

Singeli
136mlochbaum/Singeli · BQNSingeli is a domain-specific language for building high-performance algorithms, including SIMD code. It provides flexible abstractions over code that maps to individual CPU instructions, and it compiles your programs down to C.
- 95

lytlnyblOS
116red-mutt/lytlnyblOS · ClytlnyblOS ('little nibble OS') is a small 32-bit operating system built from scratch to teach beginners OS development practically. You write every line of it yourself while following the companion book.
Related topics
Often tagged together