Executive brief
A race condition in the Linux kernel's Imagination Technologies GPU driver can cause a system crash. The issue occurs when the system attempts to put the graphics processor into a low-power sleep mode while it is still processing background tasks. This leads to a kernel panic, resulting in a complete loss of system availability.
Technical details
A race condition exists in the drm/imagination driver within the Linux kernel's Power Management (PM) implementation. The runtime PM suspend callback fails to synchronize with active interrupt (IRQ) handlers running on other CPU cores. If an IRQ handler attempts to access GPU registers after the GPU has been suspended, it triggers an asynchronous SError or kernel panic. The fix involves calling synchronize_irq() during the power-off sequence to ensure all handlers finish before suspension and removing improper PM resume/put calls in the threaded IRQ handler that could cause deadlocks.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.8 to 6.18.20, 6.19 to 6.19.10, 7.0-rc1 to 7.0-rc4
Timeline
- 2026-03-10: patched: Initial patch authored by Imagination Technologies
- 2026-04-03: disclosed: CVE assigned and published