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⇱ Intel Linux Driver Patch Posted For Wildcat Lake NPU Accelerator Support - Phoronix


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Intel Linux Driver Patch Posted For Wildcat Lake NPU Accelerator Support

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 6 June 2025 at 02:08 PM EDT. Add A Comment
Last month Intel software engineers began posting Linux enablement patches for Wildcat Lake. Some of those first patches were merged for Linux 6.16 while more work is forthcoming. Posted yesterday for the first time on the Linux kernel mailing list was enabling the NPU accelerator support for Wildcat Lake.

Intel Wildcat Lake is believed to be the successor to Intel Twin Lake in catering to ultra-mobile devices. Wildcat Lake is rumored to be coming in up to six CPU Core designs and with up to two Xe3 graphics cores. Wildcat Lake will be rather basic in comparison to the very promising Panther Lake SoCs.

With yesterday's patch there is Wildcat Lake support for the IVPU accelerator driver in supporting the SoC's NPU.

👁 Wildcat Lake NPU


The patch confirms that Wildcat Lake is using NPU5 IP just like Panther Lake. The patch in turn just adds a new NPU device ID for Wildcat Lake and is otherwise following the same codepaths as Panther Lake within this IVPU accelerator driver.

With only seeing the start of Wildcat Lake Linux enablement patches last month and more patches still expected to materialize, which will then presumably get ironed out for the Linux 6.17~6.18 cycles, Wildcat Lake presumably isn't launching until into 2026.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.