Intel on Friday released an updated user-space driver for their Neural Processing Unit (NPU) found with Core Ultra SoCs. This user-space driver code works with the IVPU accelerator kernel driver for opening up the Intel NPU for helping speed-up AI workloads on Linux.
The Intel NPU Driver 1.13 release jumps ahead from the prior v1.10.1 release and lacks any concise change-log… The new version is squashed into one Git commit changing 175 files and adding over 25 thousand lines of new code. So it’s not easy diving into all of the changes in this updated Intel NPU driver code. Some of the items that stand out in browsing through all of the new code is adding Perfetto support, preparation for upcoming NPU hardware with Panther Lake, various Level Zero integration enhancements, and a lot of fixes.
Compared to prior Intel NPU Driver releases, this v1.13 release also is now formally validated on Ubuntu 24.10 across Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake platforms.
Those wanting to download this newest Intel NPU driver code for Linux systems can find it on GitHub. Again, along with this driver code you need to be running a recent version of the Linux kernel for the IVPU accel kernel driver support.
