Ahead of the [1]Intel Core Ultra 200V "Lunar Lake" laptops beginning to ship starting next week, the Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.8 is now available as the latest software update for embracing the Intel NPU for AI offloading.

The Intel Linux NPU driver code has already supported the upcoming Lunar Lake for some time along with Arrow Lake. The v1.8 release out today appears to be just tidying things up ahead of Intel Lunar Lake laptops beginning to ship. The Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake NPU support with this driver has all been tested in conjunction with the Linux 6.8 kernel found on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and its iVPU accelerator kernel driver.

This Intel NPU Driver 1.8 release was tested by Intel with OpenVINO 2024.3 and oneAPI Level Zero 1.17.6. No change-log of v1.8 particulars were provided.

Those interested in the Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.8 release can find it on [2]GitHub . As mentioned previously I resorted to [3]pre-ordering a Lunar Lake laptop to begin delivering Linux support information and benchmarks beginning later this month.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Launched

[2] https://github.com/intel/linux-npu-driver/releases/tag/v1.8.0

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Lunar-Lake-Linux-Zenbook