Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake CPUs will be featuring a brand new VPU engine which has received its initial support within Linux 6.6.
Intel's Revamped VPU4 Aims at Drastically Improving AI/ML Performance, Will Be Featured in Lunar Lake CPUs
Phoronix discloses that DRM (Direct Rendering Manager), which is a subsystem within Linux has released support for VPU4, which is expected to debut with Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs. For those who are unaware of what VPUs are, they are "Versatile Processing Units", and are dedicated to enhancing performance in deep learning and HPC applications. The units have recently gained traction with the boom in AI, hence by the looks of it, Intel is taking "VPUs" much more seriously than it previously did.
The initial patches for "VPU4 enablement" surfaced a while back in Linux 6.3 which initially revealed Intel's plans to integrate the dedicated AI engine onto Lunar Lake CPUs. With the VPU4 support in Linux 6.6, it is evident that Intel is playing safe here, providing support for a release that is still two years ahead. Phoronix reports that it expects more development on VPUs in the upcoming kernel cycles, hence we could see even further developments, potentially leading to a decisive conclusion.
The company also recently confirmed that Lunar Lake CPUs will utilize Lion Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores as the main driving architectures for its next-gen "Core Ultra" family.
Intel's approach to next-gen launches is surely interesting, and the company isn't the only one working on future architectures. We recently reported that AMD has released Freesync Panel Replay, along with initial patches for upcoming RDNA4 architecture, suggesting that Team Red is also into making Linux a much bigger platform than it currently is.
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