We are pleased to announce the availability of the intel-npu-driver snap in the Snap Store. The IntelⓇ NPU is an AI inference accelerator built into IntelⓇ CoreTM Ultra processors, starting with first series devices (formerly known as Meteor Lake) and continuing in newer and future series devices such as Lunar Lake, and can be found in many laptop and desktop devices. The intel-npu-driver snap bundles many components of the IntelⓇ NPU driver software stack, including device firmware, a user space driver and compiler, and an application to validate the user mode driver and compiler.
While we have published the snap to enable easy access and installation, please note that the snap is still relatively new and therefore only available in edge and beta channels for now. To install the snap from the beta channel use the following command:
sudo snap install --beta intel-npu-driver
The intel-npu-driver snap is a producer snap, which allows applications and plug-ins to access and use the NPU. More details about how to integrate consumer snap applications with the intel-npu-driver snap can be found in the README for the Intel NPU Driver Snap GitHub repository. Application developers who want to run AI inference tasks on the IntelⓇ NPU are encouraged to also consult documentation from Intel’s OpenVINO AIML framework.
Many popular desktop applications (e.g. GIMP, Audacity, and OBS) are already providing NPU plugins, and work is underway to integrate these plugins into existing snaps using the intel-npu-driver producer snap, so stay tuned!