Show HN: Npunlock – Run custom C kernels for Intel NPUs

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Show HN: Npunlock – Run custom C kernels for Intel NPUs

(github.com)

by hsfzxjy

alightsoul
11d
I failed a few days ago to use the npu with openvino and llama.cpp. I will try again with this and hopefully open source it. Thanks
Of course I will do everything on Linux. Might contribute back
1. hsfzxjy • OP
  01d
  I have added a prober program which can run specific tests on linux and generate reports. This should be a nice start.
hsfzxjy • OP
23d
Author here. Feel free to ask any questions :)
1. __atx__
  13d
  Nice work! I have been messing with doing some radio DSP on the NPU in my laptop and found the Intel graph compiler to be rather unpredictable. Weird random mis-lowering to fp16 ops instead of int8, unpredictable throughput depending on tensor sizes, reshapes being sometimes extremely expensive and sometimes basically free etc.
  Obviously I am mostly just driving the DPU, as the SHAVE cores are just not beefy enough, but maybe this will be useful at some point, at least to gain more insight into the architecture...
Bayard_ne
33d
Finally, bare-metal NPU programming! Immediately thought of those custom, weird inference tasks Intel won't ever officially support.
1. alightsoul
  11d
  Finally npus can be like cuda. Why did Intel limit themselves to openvino? Didn't want to take on the burden of something like cuda? Maybe they want to separate consumer and business NPUs from data center products which use oneapi which is more like cuda
Gigachad
13d
What is this useful for?
1. hsfzxjy • OP
  03d
  The main use is enabling developers to write their own NPU kernels according to their respective need, instead of picking workaround from what Intel provides in OpenVINO. I think the project would benefit three scenarios:
  1. Implement uncommon NN operators.
  2. Implement a high-precision (FP32, etc.) version of existing OpenVINO operators for numerically sensitive usage.
  3. Implement a mega kernel that fuse several small kernels together to reduce SHAVE invocations, and potentially improve performance.
  But most importantly, it gives you more control over the hardware you own. That control IMO should have been yours from day one you bought the machine.
alex7o
03d
Pls do hexagon next
ur-whale
43d
> Requirements Windows x64
plonk.
1. hsfzxjy • OP
  23d
  I have no access to other environment setting, so, sadly, that's the best I can do for now.
  But based on my understanding, playing this on Linux or newer NPU generations might be possible. I have recorded my hypotheses in [0]. Verifying the hypotheses would require additional utility tools, which I am stilling crafting.
  [0]: https://github.com/hsfzxjy/npunlock/blob/master/wiki/PORTING...
ktahan629
03d
[dead]