Ryzen AI Software 1.6.1 Advertises Linux Support
Ryzen AI Software as AMD's collection of tools and libraries for AI inferencing on AMD Ryzen AI class PCs has Linux support with its newest point release. Though this "early access" Linux support is restricted to registered AMD customers.
Earlier this year we reported on AMD previewing a new Linux runtime stack for Ryzen AI NPUs and built off their AMDXDNA kernel accelerator driver. That now appears to be bundled into the Ryzen AI Software collection, which previously was Windows-only. With the newest Ryzen AI Software 1.6.1 point release the only noted change in the release notes is Linux support:
Ryzen AI Linux support with support for CNN, Transformer, and LLM flows. Though that "Ryzen AI Software Early Access Lounge" is what then sends you over to a sign-in area for registered developers/customers with AMD. Beyond that though I don't have any details on this new Linux support in just learning about it earlier today. Likely it just builds off the upstream AMDXDNA kernel accelerator driver and then the user-space bits like the Xilinx XRT stack. Rather silly that they continue to gate their pre-built Linux binaries in just making it more difficult for Linux developers to engage and leverage the Ryzen AI NPUs finally under Linux.
This documentation page notes Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as the only officially supported Linux distribution for Ryzen AI Software.
The Linux support is said to support NPU execution and work with CNN models in INT8 or BF16 format, NLP models in BF16 format, and LLMs only for NPU-based execution and typically needing 64GB+ system memory.
Earlier this year we reported on AMD previewing a new Linux runtime stack for Ryzen AI NPUs and built off their AMDXDNA kernel accelerator driver. That now appears to be bundled into the Ryzen AI Software collection, which previously was Windows-only. With the newest Ryzen AI Software 1.6.1 point release the only noted change in the release notes is Linux support:
Ryzen AI Linux support with support for CNN, Transformer, and LLM flows. Though that "Ryzen AI Software Early Access Lounge" is what then sends you over to a sign-in area for registered developers/customers with AMD. Beyond that though I don't have any details on this new Linux support in just learning about it earlier today. Likely it just builds off the upstream AMDXDNA kernel accelerator driver and then the user-space bits like the Xilinx XRT stack. Rather silly that they continue to gate their pre-built Linux binaries in just making it more difficult for Linux developers to engage and leverage the Ryzen AI NPUs finally under Linux.
This documentation page notes Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as the only officially supported Linux distribution for Ryzen AI Software.
👁 Ryzen AI Software for diagram
The Linux support is said to support NPU execution and work with CNN models in INT8 or BF16 format, NLP models in BF16 format, and LLMs only for NPU-based execution and typically needing 64GB+ system memory.