Intel Volleys First Patches As Part Of Linux Bring-Up For Keem Bay
Keem Bay is Intel's next-generation Movidius VPU they disclosed last November. Keem Bay is supposed to bring a 10x improvement to inference performance and intended for various edge computing scenarios.
Keem Bay performance figures indicated at Intel's AI Summit 2019 were on Ubuntu Linux with their own internal software builds but it seems the public bring-up for the mainline kernel has been a bit slow. Sent out today is the first kernel patch I am aware of specifically acknowledging Keem Bay.
Besides being the first Keem Bay kernel patches we have seen, they are for the eMMC PHY of the platform. So far no other juicy patches have hit the lists or Git repositories that we have spotted.
This next-gen Intel VPU was supposed to be launching in H1'2020 but given the start of the Linux kernel enablement is now happening at the end of Q1, we're guessing the Keem Bay launch may have been pushed back a bit as otherwise it's quite unusual seeing a new Intel platform launching without good Linux support at-launch, especially when it comes to an area of the market predominantly running Linux. We'll see what other Keem Bay patches might be coming in the days ahead for potentially making the Linux 5.7 cycle.
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