Core 14s have a VPU upgrade on Linux, how is that possible?

They have not come to market and instead already have support for their VPU. That’s right, the Intel Meteor Lake are becoming more and more a reality and as such, the blue team is working hard on the Core 14 to bring driver support for their new unit. VPU “Versatile Processing Unit”, which will receive it on Linux in the first place instead of Windows. Let’s see what’s new.

In September 2016, Intel made a rather interesting purchase move, acquiring the company Movidius, which specialized in the field of artificial vision. So that we understand each other, this company worked on software and ecosystems where machines could interpret the environment, with cameras, chips and systems so that the robot on duty was more “smart” with everything around it. This purchase will soon pay off on PCs within Meteor Lake processors.

Intel gives support in the Core 14 to its VPU in Linux 6.3

It will not be the idea that Movidius had in mind when it was bought by Intel, but 7 years later we will see its fruits. The Versatile Processing Unit, not to be confused with video or vision units as such, is designed as an inference accelerator for Artificial Intelligence. It is not clear if it will be a separate SoC or it will arrive integrated as part of the Meteor Lake die, but we do know its purpose:

• Energy efficient execution for Deep Learning.
• Object detection.
• Object classification.
• Parameter analysis.

Last summer, Intel engineers worked on the first support for Linux as an open source driver, so what we are going to see next are the updates they have included for it, which is now catapulted as the first driver. within the AI ​​accelerator subsystem.

rm-misc-next-2023-01-24:
drm-misc-next for v6.3:

UAPI Changes:

Cross-subsystem Changes:

Core Changes:

• EDID: Improved mode parsing and refactoring
• fbdev: Cleanups
• format-helper: Add conversion from XRGB8888 to XBGR8888 and ABGR8888

Driver Changes:

• accel/ivpu: Add driver for Intel VPU accelerator
• bridge: Support i.MX93 LDB plus DT bindings
• exynos: Fixes
• panel: vtdr6130: Fixes; Support AUO A030JTN01 plus DT bindings
• simpledrm: Support system-memory framebuffers plus DT bindings
• ssd130x: Fix sparse warning

The following changes since commit bd43a9844bc6f78e00fdc91db47f6969d10c5ac5:

drm: bridge: ldb: Warn if LDB clock does not match requested link frequency (2023-01-19 08:50:50 +0100) are available in the Git repository at:

git://anongit.freedesktop.org/drm/drm-misc tags/drm-misc-next-2023-01-24

for you to fetch changes up to 51affef35bb39f186aef7eeeb4a7f9ceccd3e65e:

drm/ssd130x: Silence a `dubious: x & !y` warning (2023-01-24 11:02:33 +0100)

drm-misc-next for v6.3:

UAPI Changes:

Cross-subsystem Changes:

Core Changes:

• EDID: Improved mode parsing and refactoring
• fbdev: Cleanups
• format-helper: Add conversion from XRGB8888 to XBGR8888 and ABGR8888

Driver Changes:

• accel/ivpu: Add driver for Intel VPU accelerator
• bridge: Support i.MX93 LDB plus DT bindings
• exynos: Fixes
• panel: vtdr6130: Fixes; Support AUO A030JTN01 plus DT bindings
• simpledrm: Support system-memory framebuffers plus DT bindings
• ssd130x: Fix sparse warning

The interesting thing here is that Intel once again thinks of Linux before Windows. We assume that by its nature it will be easier to get feedback in this OS than in Windows in terms of code, although of course it cannot be tested because the processors still they have not gone on the market and we are months away from it.

The important thing is that Intel intends to give a good push to the energy efficiency through AI and the architecture of the Meteor Lake processors, and that is good news coming from where we come from.