The Zhouyi AI accelerator was developed by Arm China and is Current in some SoCs So far. An open-supply Linux kernel driver is being labored on for it however sadly for now A minimal of any mainline ambitions are immediately stalled over The scarcity of an open-supply consumer-space/shopper.
A Baidu engineer posted a set of patches implementing the Zhouyi AI accelerator assist in A mannequin new “zynpu” driver for the kernel. The Greater than 5 thousand strains of code present this preliminary assist. The Zhouyi AI accelerator is Current in some Arm SoCs Simply like the Allwinner R329.
This driver in its preliminary type assists each the ZHOUYI Z1 and ZHOUYI Z2. This preliminary Linux kernel driver, which is looking for for inclusion into the kernel’s “staging” space till in higher type, Might be found on the kernel mailing itemizing.
But any mainlining effort for Now’s immediately stalled As a Outcome of the Zhouyi AI accelerator lacks an open-supply consumer-space driver/SDK. Arm China Is merely distrihowevering the consumer-space elements as binary blobs and thus till There’s an official open-supply consumer or reverse-engineered open implementation, this driver Will not be accepted to the mainline kernel.
Even the developer involved in Scripting this kernel driver Does not Appear to have the consumer-space supplys however Goes to be left to reverse-engineer it. Cai Huoqing famous, “The consumermode code is shut, I just acquired an library… it solely works with a shutd supply consumermode driver, so Want to reverse the libraries, and implement it, then open supply
the consumermode driver.”
Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Driver-Zhouyi-AI
