Last month Intel software engineers began posting [1]Linux enablement patches for Wildcat Lake . Some of those first patches were [2]merged for Linux 6.16 while more work is forthcoming. Posted yesterday for the first time on the Linux kernel mailing list was enabling the NPU accelerator support for Wildcat Lake.

Intel Wildcat Lake is believed to be the successor to Intel Twin Lake in catering to ultra-mobile devices. Wildcat Lake is rumored to be coming in up to six CPU Core designs and with up to two Xe3 graphics cores. Wildcat Lake will be rather basic in comparison to the very promising [3]Panther Lake SoCs.

With yesterday's [4]patch there is Wildcat Lake support for the IVPU accelerator driver in supporting the SoC's NPU.

The patch confirms that Wildcat Lake is using NPU5 IP just like Panther Lake. The patch in turn just adds a new NPU device ID for Wildcat Lake and is otherwise following the same codepaths as Panther Lake within this IVPU accelerator driver.

With only seeing the start of Wildcat Lake Linux enablement patches last month and more patches still expected to materialize, which will then presumably get ironed out for the Linux 6.17~6.18 cycles, Wildcat Lake presumably isn't launching until into 2026.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Wildcat-Lake-Linux-Begins

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-Sound

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Panther+Lake

[4] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20250605161947.1237727-1-maciej.falkowski@linux.intel.com/