Canonical has put the official Linux Intel NPU driver on the Snap Store.
The new Intel NPU Driver snap “bundles many components […] including device firmware, a user space driver and compiler, and an application to validate the user mode driver and compiler”.
Or to put it another way: everything needs to harness the AI inference accelerators now built-in to the latest Intel Core Ultra processors (‘Meteor Lake’ and above).
The catch (for now) is that the Intel NPU Driver snap is currently in beta, ergo rock-solid reliability isn’t currently a given.
It should also go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that need supported hardware to make use of this driver — the snap doesn’t install an NPU!
And for this driver to actually do anything you also need to be using software, tools, and apps that know how to use it for “AI” workloads and whatnot. Beyond CLI LLM/ML tools there are already OpenVINO AI plugins for GIMP and Audacity able to leverage the Intel NPU for specific tasks.
If you’re equipped with the right hardware, and eager to see how things work in practice, you can install the Intel NPU driver on Ubuntu easily enough.
Open a new Terminal window and run:
sudo snap install --beta intel-npu-driver
Expect further improvements, plus deeper integration with snap applications in the coming months per the announcement.
Canonical is bullish on Ubuntu’s AI/ML capabilities, and with Ubuntu desktop one of the most popular platforms for developers, I’m expecting their enthusiasm to accelerate as NPUs become commonplace in consumer-grade hardware.