Out this morning is the Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.17 release as the newest version of their user-space Neural Processing Unit (NPU) driver code that interfaces with the IVPU accelerator kernel driver.
There remains no concise change-log or the like for the Intel NPU Linux driver releases but in digging through the mega-commit bumping it to v1.17 there’s been enhancements around ONNX Runtime support, continued updates for the flagship OpenVINO AI toolkit integration, RPM build packaging work, and many other smaller low-level changes.
With the Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.17 release they are also working on further transitioning from their original Versatile Processing Unit (VPU) name over to standardizing more on “NPU” references, including for the library name now:
“The library name has changed from libze_intel_vpu to libze_intel_npu. Using an older version of Level Zero than v1.17.17 requires using libze_intel_vpu.so.1”
The Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.17 release has been validated across Intel Core Ultra Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake systems on Ubuntu.
Those wanting to try out the updated Intel NPU Linux Driver can find it via GitHub.
