Releasing on Friday was the Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.38 as the user-space open-source driver components for leveraging the Core Ultra Neural Processing Unit (NPU) under Linux in conjunction with the upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver.
With the new Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.38 release there is just one listed change and a rather surprising one at that... official support for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
The Intel NPU Linux stack has worked on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS already, but only now is officially recognized by Intel and formally supported by their packaged user-space driver stack. That's five months after Ubuntu 26.04 debuted and right ahead of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release.
Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Panther Lake, and Wildcat Lake have all been tested now on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS to ensure the user-space NPU driver is working properly. This is done on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS with the default Linux 7.0 kernel build. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS continues to be officially supported too by this driver stack.
Aside from officially supporting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, there are no other listed changes with the new Intel NPU driver 1.38 release. Those interested can download the new user mode driver on
With the new Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.38 release there is just one listed change and a rather surprising one at that... official support for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
The Intel NPU Linux stack has worked on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS already, but only now is officially recognized by Intel and formally supported by their packaged user-space driver stack. That's five months after Ubuntu 26.04 debuted and right ahead of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release.
Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, Panther Lake, and Wildcat Lake have all been tested now on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS to ensure the user-space NPU driver is working properly. This is done on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS with the default Linux 7.0 kernel build. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS continues to be officially supported too by this driver stack.
Aside from officially supporting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, there are no other listed changes with the new Intel NPU driver 1.38 release. Those interested can download the new user mode driver on