Ubuntu Snaps Up Intel's NPU User-Space Software So It's Easier To Accelerate AI

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Snaps Up Intel's NPU User-Space Software So It's Easier To Accelerate AI

Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical has announced the availability of an Intel NPU driver Snap package within their Snap Store to make it easier to leverage the Intel neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra processors within Ubuntu Linux...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-Snaps-Intel-NPU-Driver

[uid313]

I wish Canonical would influence their partners to publish on the Snap store and help out their partners in doings so.

Snap is great but unfortunately many applications are missing. I would like to see Bun, Deno, Cockpit, Apache, Lighttpd, MySQL, MariaSQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey, and VirtualBox in Canonical's Snap store.

[ziguana]

Snap is great

fist time i'm reading this

[sophisticles]

The Intel NPU driver stack is designed to work with the OpenVINO AI toolkit that is also maintained by Intel. Canonical is also hoping with this Snap to eventually ship NPU plug-ins for desktop applications like GIMP and Audacity and OBS that may begin making use of the Intel NPU hardware.

This is the type of developments that Intel needs to make their processors a must have.

I use Audacity all the time, and OBS occasionally, if they start using Intel's NPU that could be the type of thing that radically changes the calculus when looking at benchmark results.

I want to see this extended to Shotcut and Avidemux, the latter has a software based AI upscaler that is pretty good but slower as can be, if these editors could incorporate an NPU accelerated AI upscaler that would be a game changer.

This is the type of thing Intel needs to invest in, throw a lousy million at each project with the understanding that they will incorporate NPU powered AI upscaling using OpenVINO AI toolkit and the demand for Intel's CPUs would skyrocket.

[geerge]

This is the type of developments that Intel needs to make their processors a must have.

I use Audacity all the time, and OBS occasionally, if they start using Intel's NPU that could be the type of thing that radically changes the calculus when looking at benchmark results.

I want to see this extended to Shotcut and Avidemux, the latter has a software based AI upscaler that is pretty good but slower as can be, if these editors could incorporate an NPU accelerated AI upscaler that would be a game changer.

This is the type of thing Intel needs to invest in, throw a lousy million at each project with the understanding that they will incorporate NPU powered AI upscaling using OpenVINO AI toolkit and the demand for Intel's CPUs would skyrocket.

Any reason to think that anything that implements intel NPU support couldn't/wouldn't also implement AMD NPU support? All I know is that AMD's number is bigger but that their software stack is generally crappier.

[sophisticles]

Any reason to think that anything that implements intel NPU support couldn't/wouldn't also implement AMD NPU support? All I know is that AMD's number is bigger but that their software stack is generally crappier.

While OpenVINO works on all CPU's and GPU's via OpenCL, the AI capabilities only work on Intel NPU's:

https://github.com/openvinotoolkit/openvino

[sarmad]

It's nice that they are packaging these kinds of things as snaps, but what's with creating different snap channels for different Ubuntu versions? Yesterday I realized that the default apps that come preinstalled in Ubuntu have dedicated channels for different versions (22.04, 23.10, 24.04, etc). Why is this? Isn't one of the main reasons behind snaps so you build it once and run it on all distros/versions?

[uid313]

fist time i'm reading this

Yeah, I really like Snap, it is very easy to install software and then uninstall it and getting rid of all the dependencies, so it is a good and nice way to try out new software. I also like that it is sandboxed which is good for security.

Besides Snap I also like Flatpak for the same reasons.

I am happy with both Snap and Flatpak and don't really have any preference between them, they're both good.

[stormcrow]

It's nice that they are packaging these kinds of things as snaps, but what's with creating different snap channels for different Ubuntu versions? Yesterday I realized that the default apps that come preinstalled in Ubuntu have dedicated channels for different versions (22.04, 23.10, 24.04, etc). Why is this? Isn't one of the main reasons behind snaps so you build it once and run it on all distros/versions?

It's so developers don't end up with library dependency hell trying to support 3 different library stacks (ex 24.04, 22.04, plus the current 6 month testing version), but there's no way you can completely ignore the underlying OS when you're flying so close to the kernel/hardware level with drivers inside the snap itself.

[woddy]

Yeah, I really like Snap, it is very easy to install software and then uninstall it and getting rid of all the dependencies, so it is a good and nice way to try out new software. I also like that it is sandboxed which is good for security.

Besides Snap I also like Flatpak for the same reasons.

I am happy with both Snap and Flatpak and don't really have any preference between them, they're both good.

I agree with you, however it is misleading to call snaps universal applications is false and a scam.
If you are not using Ubuntu snaps do not have the same security that Canonical claims.
Not all distributions use AppArmor and even using it you must have all the correct profiles.
So... while flatpak is a universal method of distributing applications regardless of distribution, snap seems to be more specific to Ubuntu.