Open-source developer Tomeu Vizoso who developed the open-source and reverse-engineered [1]"Rocket" accel driver for the Rockchip NPU and also worked on the [2]Etnaviv/Vivante NPU support and other related code like Mesa's Teflon is teasing new NPU drivers coming in the new year.

Back at XDC2025, Tomeu talked about the state of AI/ML accelerators and the work done to the Linux kernel accelerator "accel" drivers.

For 2026 he talked up PyTorch/Executorch support as well as NIR for optimization passes and lowering models to the hardware. NIR being the common IR to Mesa graphics drivers but also now seeing increasing exposure for AI/ML.

Tomeu also stated that a new unnamed accelerator driver is coming out in the first half of 2026 and a second also unnamed driver is expected in the second half of 2026.

That's all for now but those interested can find the slide assets [3]here . Tomeu Vizoso and Philipp Zabel also presented at XDC2025 on machine learning with NIR, with that video embedded above.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rockchip-NPU-Linux-Mesa

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Etnaviv-NPU-Optimize-Mesa-24.1

[3] https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/404/attachments/245/333/XDC_2025_NPU_TV.pdf