Ubuntu Snaps Up Intel's NPU User-Space Software So It's Easier To Accelerate AI
This new "intel-npu-driver" Snap package provides the user-space driver components needed for making use of the NPU in Core Ultra Meteor Lake and now Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processors within Ubuntu Linux. This Snap package doesn't deal with the IVPU accelerator kernel driver that's been upstream within the mainline Linux kernel for a while. As long as you're on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Ubuntu 24.10, or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with the hardware enablement kernel, you should be in good shape from the kernel side while this Snap provides the needed user-space bits.
With a simple snap install --beta intel-npu-driver the user-space components of the UMD driver, NPU device firmware, and NPU compiler are included plus a simple application for testing the Intel NPU driver stack. Due to being a brand new Snap, for now the intel-npu-driver is just in the beta and edge Snap channels.
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 a nice step for enhancing the Intel NPU software availability on Ubuntu Linux although many readers would have preferred Debian packages to Snaps. It's also a matter of still waiting for more Linux applications to begin offering NPU support/plug-ins for actually making use of this new hardware IP found on Core Ultra processors.
Those wishing to learn more about this Snap'ed Intel NPU driver support can read the Ubuntu Discourse announcement. More details on the software bundled into this Snap can also be found via the intel-npu-driver-snap GitHub repository.
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