AMD XDNA Linux Driver v3 Published For Ryzen AI Upstreaming

AMD engineers continue work toward upstreaming their XDNA kernel driver for Linux in enabling the Ryzen AI NPU on open-source. The "v3" patches were posted on Wednesday but given the timing it looks like it will be missing out still on merging for the upcoming Linux 6.12 LTS cycle.

Back in July AMD finally posted the XDNA Linux driver patches for review in getting the kernel code evaluated for upstreaming into the mainline Linux kernel. That came after AMD posted the initial XDNA Linux code in January, a year after AMD APUs began appearing with the Ryzen AI NPU for helping with AI workloads.

In August the v2 XDNA driver patches were posted in addressing early code review comments from kernel developers.

The v3 patches posted yesterday update the AMD NPU driver documentation, change the AIE2_DEVM_SIZE size to 64M for accommodating firmware changes, and other code changes from prior code review comments. This "AMDXDNA" kernel driver continues being fitted to the kernel's "accel" accelerator subsystem that lives under the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver umbrella.

Those interested can see the AMDXDNA v3 driver patches if spinning your own kernel build. Given the Linux 6.12 merge window is kicking off next week already, unless this is attempted as a late merge given it's for new hardware without risking existing hardware support, more than likely it's not going to land until at least Linux v6.13 in the new year.