RE: [PATCH v2 0/9] accel: New driver for NXP's Neutron NPU

[Ioana Ciocoi Radulescu <ruxandra.radulescu@nxp.com>]

On Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 7:19 PM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> 
> Hi Ioana,
> 
> Looks like the userspace portion of the driver is closed source 
> (libNeutronDriver.so)?
> 
> https://github.com/nxp-imx/tflite-neutron-delegate/blob/lf-6.12.49_2.2
> .0/CMakeLists.txt

Hi Tomeu,

Yes, it's closed for now. We do plan to publish the source code
on github, but I believe that's still a few months away.

Thanks,
Ioana

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Tomeu
> 
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2026 at 2:27 PM Ioana Ciocoi-Radulescu
> <ruxandra.radulescu@nxp.com> wrote:
> >
> > Introduce a new accel driver for the Neutron Neural Processing Unit
> > (NPU), along with associated dt-bindings and DTS node.
> >
> > The first patch extends the GEM DMA helper APIs to allow bidirectional
> > mapping of non-coherent DMA buffers. While not part of the Neutron
> > driver, it's a prerequisite allowing us to use the GEM DMA helper.
> >
> > Neutron is a Neural Processing Unit from NXP, providing machine
> > learning (ML) acceleration for edge AI applications. Neutron is
> > integrated on NXP SoCs such as the i.MX95.
> >
> > The NPU consists of the following:
> > - RISC-V core running a proprietary firmware
> > - One or more Neutron cores, representing the main computation
> >   engine performing ML operations
> > - Dedicated fast memory (TCM)
> > - DMA engine that handles data transfers between DDR and TCM
> >
> > The firmware is closed source and distributed as a binary here [1].
> >
> > The Neutron software stack also contains a userspace library [1] and a
> > LiteRT custom delegate [2] that allow integration with standard LiteRT
> > tools.
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/nxp-upstream/neutron/tree/upstream
> > [2] https://github.com/nxp-imx/tflite-neutron-delegate
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Ioana Ciocoi-Radulescu <ruxandra.radulescu@nxp.com>
> > ---
> > Changes in v2:
> > - rebase on newer drm-misc-next
> > - dt bindings: clock fixes and renames
> > - update DTS to match new names
> > - remove unnecessary fields from neutron_job structure
> > - fix use of uninitialized variable
> >
> > - Link to v1:
> > https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260226-neutron-v1-0-46eccb3bb50a@nxp.com
> >
> > ---
> > Ioana Ciocoi-Radulescu (9):
> >       drm/gem-dma: Add flag for bidirectional mapping of non-coherent GEM
> DMA buffers
> >       accel/neutron: Add documentation for NXP Neutron accelerator driver
> >       dt-bindings: npu: Add NXP Neutron
> >       accel/neutron: Add driver for NXP Neutron NPU
> >       accel/neutron: Add GEM buffer object support
> >       accel/neutron: Add mailbox support
> >       accel/neutron: Add job submission IOCTL
> >       accel/neutron: Add logging support
> >       arm64: dts: imx95: Add Neutron node
> >
> >  Documentation/accel/index.rst                      |   1 +
> >  Documentation/accel/neutron/index.rst              |  12 +
> >  Documentation/accel/neutron/neutron.rst            | 131 ++++++++
> >  .../devicetree/bindings/npu/nxp,imx95-neutron.yaml |  96 ++++++
> >  MAINTAINERS                                        |  10 +
> >  arch/arm64/boot/dts/freescale/imx95.dtsi           |  28 ++
> >  drivers/accel/Kconfig                              |   1 +
> >  drivers/accel/Makefile                             |   3 +-
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/Kconfig                      |  16 +
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/Makefile                     |  12 +
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_debugfs.c            |  34 ++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_debugfs.h            |  15 +
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_device.c             | 239 +++++++++++++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_device.h             | 155 +++++++++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_driver.c             | 262 +++++++++++++++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_driver.h             |  16 +
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_gem.c                | 116 +++++++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_gem.h                |  14 +
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_job.c                | 372
> +++++++++++++++++++++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_job.h                |  43 +++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_mailbox.c            |  47 +++
> >  drivers/accel/neutron/neutron_mailbox.h            |  42 +++
> >  drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_dma_helper.c               |   6 +-
> >  include/drm/drm_gem_dma_helper.h                   |   3 +
> >  include/uapi/drm/neutron_accel.h                   | 130 +++++++
> >  25 files changed, 1801 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> > ---
> > base-commit: 6716101ae42949e98ad4b9e71eeba08c055be410
> > change-id: 20260226-neutron-c435e39d167f
> >
> > Best regards,
> > --
> > Ioana Ciocoi-Radulescu <ruxandra.radulescu@nxp.com>
> >