Linux 7.1 adds Ryzen AI NPU power reporting

Native NPU power visibility in the kernel is the missing piece for serious AI workload profiling on AMD Ryzen AI hardware — and Linux 7.1 finally closes that gap.

• –The new `DRM_IOCTL_AMDXDNA_GET_INFO` ioctl surfaces real-time power estimates by bridging the AMDXDNA driver with AMD's PMF platform driver — a clean kernel-layer solution versus vendor CLI tools
• –Column utilization reporting lets developers measure how busy the NPU actually is, enabling proper efficiency benchmarking across different LLM and AI inference workloads
• –This builds on GNOME Resources 1.10 (Feb 2026) adding NPU monitoring support, signaling a maturing ecosystem of observability tooling for AMD NPUs on Linux
• –AMD's `xrt-smi` CLI already offered some NPU metrics at the firmware layer; moving this into the kernel driver makes it universally accessible without vendor software stacks
• –Growing developer interest in running local LLM inference on NPUs makes power-per-token metrics increasingly critical — this addition arrives at the right time