Following the [1]numerous Intel Linux developer departures last month from the company following layoffs at Intel and others deciding to voluntarily leave, there is another one to report today. One of the Intel IVPU accelerator driver maintainers for the Intel NPUs found in Core Ultra SoCs is departing the company.

The staffing challenges at Intel have led to [2]various Linux driver maintainer changes and even some [3]drivers being orphaned as a result . One of the Intel IVPU/NPU driver maintainers announced publicly today he is leaving Intel but at least there are two other existing maintainers there to keep this important NPU accelerator driver moving.

Intel engineer Jacek Lawrynowicz wrote on [4]the DRI mailing list to update the MAINTAINERS file entry that he will no longer be maintaining the Intel IVPU accelerator driver for NPUs:

"Remove myself from the intel_vpu driver maintainer list as I'm moving to another company. Time to let someone else deal with the NPU bugs while I pretend to know what I'm doing elsewhere!

Thanks to everyone for the great collaboration (and for putting up with my creative interpretations of what "minor fixes" means)."

Intel engineers Maciej Falkowski and Karol Wachowski out of Intel's Gdansk, Poland location will continue maintaining the driver.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-coretemp-Orphaned

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Gaudi-2025-Maintainer-Leaving

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-SLM-Driver-Orphaned

[4] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20250910085526.230458-1-jacek.lawrynowicz@linux.intel.com/