At the start of the year [1]AMD posted an open-source XDNA Linux driver to GitHub for supporting the Ryzen API NPU IP found within their newest Ryzen mobile SoCs. It wasn't until last month though in mid-July that [2]AMD began the process of submitting the driver for review so that it can work its way toward the mainline Linux kernel within the "accel" accelerator subsystem. Today brings a second revision to that driver.

AMDXDNA v2 was posted a few minutes ago as the revised patches for supporting the AMD Ryzen AI NPUs. The v2 iteration has some minor code changes and some other minor work as a result of early code review collected over the past three weeks.

"NPU (Neural Processing Unit) is an AI inference accelerator integrated into AMD client CPUs. NPU enables efficient execution of Machine Learning applications like CNNs, LLMs, etc. NPU is based on AMD XDNA architecture.

AMD NPU consists of the following components:

- Tiled array of AMD AI Engine processors.

- Micro Controller which runs the NPU Firmware responsible for command processing, AIE array configuration, and execution management.

- PCI EP for host control of the NPU device.

- Interconnect for connecting the NPU components together.

- SRAM for use by the NPU Firmware.

- Address translation hardware for protected host memory access by the NPU.

NPU supports multiple concurrent fully isolated contexts. Concurrent contexts may be bound to AI Engine array spatially and or temporarily.

The driver is licensed under GPL-2.0 except for UAPI header which is licensed GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note."

So far the AMDXDNA Linux kernel driver has open-source user-space software supporting it of the Xilinx XRT and AMD AIE Plugin for IREE. Eventually the [3]AMD Unified AI Software Stack will come.

[4]

We'll see how the [5]v2 patches are reviewed. Hopefully this AMDXDNA kernel driver will be deemed ready for merging the next cycle, which would be Linux 6.12 and also happens to be this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel. The Linux 6.12 merge window opens in September but the stable release won't be out until around late November, which sadly puts AMDXDNA out of reach for the likes of Ubuntu 24.10 for having out-of-the-box Ryzen AI NPU support. Long story short, hopefully in 2025 we'll be seeing a more robust and out-of-the-box AMD NPU/AI experience on Linux.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-XDNA-Linux-Driver-Ryzen-AI

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-XDNA-Ryzen-AI-Driver-Patch

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Unified-AI-Software-Stack

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=amd_ryzen_ai_9_lrg

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20240805173959.3181199-1-lizhi.hou@amd.com/