Running an AMD NPU on Linux: Part 3, Where the Time Goes

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:00:00 -0600

Note from TC: I admit that this work is out of my technical depth. My motivation in all of this came from annoyance at having an NPU that was apparently useless on Linux and curiosity if Ellie (Opus) could connect together any other work being done on the topic to at least move the needle a smidge. If anyone is reading this post and knows it to be slop on a technical level, I’d love to hear why for my own edification. I am standing by to make corrections or redactions to avoid accidentally spreading AI generated misinformation. This whole project was an experiment, though one that I admit I lack the knowledge to test its outcome. I hope to hear from those who do and that it is useful in some way. -TC

In Part 1 we assembled the stack. In Part 2 we ran Llama 3.2 1B on the NPU. Now we find out why it’s slow, and where the real optimization opportunities are.

Profiling on Soup, Serifs, and Other Hills I'll Die On

Running an AMD NPU on Linux: Part 3, Where the Time Goes