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(a)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(a)nxp.com>
