News: 0001625960

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Intel NPU Linux Driver To Allow Limiting Frequency For Power & Thermal Management

([Intel] 100 Minutes Ago NPU Frequency Limits)


The Intel IVPU accelerator driver used on Linux for the neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra SoCs saw a patch posted for allowing the NPU clock frequency to be limited in the name of power and thermal management.

Somewhat surprisingly with how NPUs have been talked up as being a tiny part of the die and power efficient for AI, a patch under review for the Linux kernel's IVPU driver will allow limiting the NPU frequency for power and thermal management reasons.

The Intel-contributed patch for the IVPU driver will allow the minimum and maximum NPU clock speeds to be read, obtaining the optimal operating frequency, reading the current clock frequency, and with Intel NPU 50XX+ hardware to support minimum and maximum NPU frequencies. This driver patch goes in conjunction with updated Intel NPU firmware for properly handling the changes.

With the ability to set the clock frequency of the NPU limited to 50XX+ hardware, this means [1]Intel Panther Lake and newer SoCs that introduced NPU5. It's with next-gen Nova Lake where [2]Intel's 6th Gen NPU is being introduced. Prior gen Intel NPUs at least support still reading the current NPU clock frequencies, just not the ability for the user to set them.

The patch implementing the NPU frequency controls for the Linux kernel driver is out for review on [3]the dri-devel mailing list .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Panther-Lake-5th-Gen-NPU

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Nova-Lake-6th-Gen-NPU

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20260330083815.1806045-1-andrzej.kacprowski@linux.intel.com/


Throwing Windows Out The Window

The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows
and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't
going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided
to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters.

The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy
against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of
Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators,
pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the
sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office."

Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many
employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately,
Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so
during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system
won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all
Windows computers."

The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype,
asked, "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody
have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter
eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs."