Intel NPU Driver Snap

Snap recipe for the Intel NPU user mode driver. This snap is designed to be a content producer snap providing NPU (neural processing unit) firmware, char device node access, and user-space libraries (including the user mode driver and NPU compiler) for consumption by application snaps. It exposes slots for content consumer snaps to connect with, provides firmware binary blobs for the NPU device, and distributes an app for validating the user space driver (npu-umd-test).

Host OS Support

One advantage of packaging the NPU software stack as a snap is the portability across different OS versions and even Linux distributions. The main requirements for running are (i) support for snaps and (ii) a reasonably recent kernel version containing the NPU kernel driver.

Validation on Ubuntu

We have validated the snap using the npu-umd-test user mode driver validation tool on the following Intel Core Ultra CPUs and Ubuntu versions:

• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (codename: Meteor Lake)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 268V (codename: Lunar Lake)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 265H (codename: Arrow Lake)

Host OS	Kernel Version	NPU Kernel Driver Support	Test Results
22.04	5.15	❌	N/A
24.04	6.8	✅	185/200 passed
24.10	6.11	✅	191/200 passed

Skipped tests on kernel 6.8 and lower only:

• Metric streamer feature missing from intel_vpu kernel module (6 tests)

Skipped tests common across all host OS and kernel versions:

• GPU driver not present (2 tests)
• DMA capabilities require tests to be run as root (3 tests)
• Device GetZesEngineGetActivity test requires access to a file in /sys/devices for monitoring NPU utilization - this feature is considered non-critical (1 test)
• Command graph long and command graph long threaded under investigation (2 tests)
• Command queue priority under investigation (1 test)

Instructions for building and running the snap

To install the snap, you most likely want to install it from the Snap Store. For development, you may also build (note that this is resource intensive) and install it locally.

Installing the snap from the snap store

sudo snap install intel-npu-driver --beta

Building and installing the snap locally

Important note: run snapcraft in the root directory of the repo in order for hooks to be integrated with the snap correctly.

Build the snap:

snapcraft

sudo snap install --dangerous ./intel-npu-driver_*_amd64.snap

Note that this triggers an install hook that copies the firmware binary blobs to /var/snap/intel-npu-driver/current so that they are accessible to the kernel driver running on the host.

Snap slots

• intel-npu: provides access to the NPU device node on the host
• npu-libs: provides access to NPU libs, namely the NPU user mode driver with compiler

An example snippet for a consuming app's snapcraft.yaml may look like:

plugs:
  intel-npu:
    interface: custom-device
    custom-device: intel-npu-device
  npu-libs:
    interface: content
    content: npu-libs-2404
    target: $SNAP/usr/lib/npu-libs-2404

environment:
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH: $SNAP/usr/lib/npu-libs-2404:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

apps:
  npu-enabled-app:
    command: ...
    plugs:
      - intel-npu
      - npu-libs

Loading new NPU firmware

After installing the snap, check that the firmware search path was updated with:

sudo cat /sys/module/firmware_class/parameters/path

The expected output is something like:

/var/snap/intel-npu-driver/x1

Verify the intel_vpu kernel module is running and loaded the current firmware:

sudo dmesg | grep intel_vpu

Typical output:

[    4.706576] intel_vpu 0000:00:0b.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    4.714294] intel_vpu 0000:00:0b.0: [drm] Firmware: intel/vpu/vpu_37xx_v0.0.bin, version: 20230726*MTL_CLIENT_SILICON-release*2101*ci_tag_mtl_pv_vpu_rc_20230726_2101*648a666b8b9
[    4.796516] [drm] Initialized intel_vpu 1.0.0 20230117 for 0000:00:0b.0 on minor 0
[   11.084478] intel_vpu 0000:00:0b.0: [drm] Firmware: intel/vpu/vpu_37xx_v0.0.bin, version: 20240726*MTL_CLIENT_SILICON-release*0004*ci_tag_ud202428_vpu_rc_20240726_0004*e4a99ed6b3e
[   11.211998] [drm] Initialized intel_vpu 1.0.0 20230117 for 0000:00:0b.0 on minor 0

In this example output the system initially boots with the firmware that ships with OS before reloading more recent firmware provided by the snap. Check the upstream repo from Intel for the expected firmware version for your platform.

Running the npu-umd-test application

To allow non-root access to the NPU device, first ensure the appropriate user is in the render Unix group:

sudo usermod -a -G render $USER # log out and log back in

Next apply the appropriate permissions on the device node. This is required each time the intel_vpu driver is reloaded, e.g. when the snap is first installed or following a reboot.

sudo chown root:render /dev/accel/accel0
sudo chmod g+rw /dev/accel/accel0

Create input for tests. Here we store input in a special directory that is accessible both inside and outside the snap. This directory is created the first time you run the application. This is not a strict requirement for consuming snaps, for example a consuming snap may allow access to a user's home directory through the home interface.

intel-npu-driver.npu-umd-test --help

Now move into the special directory and create the input:

cd $HOME/snap/intel-npu-driver/current
mkdir -p models/add_abc
curl -o models/add_abc/add_abc.xml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openvinotoolkit/openvino/master/src/core/tests/models/ir/add_abc.xml
touch models/add_abc/add_abc.bin
curl -o basic.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/intel/linux-npu-driver/v1.10.1/validation/umd-test/configs/basic.yaml

Finally run the application:

intel-npu-driver.npu-umd-test --config=basic.yaml