Cannot change npu power mode
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- Dominant language
- C++
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Description
Changing the NPU power mode from the default "performance" to "turbo" doesn't change its actual capabiility to run faster.
Despite running the command sudo xrt-smi configure -d <BDF> --pmode turbo reports it being correctly executed and consequently the modality to supposedly having been changed, in reality npu performances after the above command aren't affected at all as also stated by the command sudo xrt-smi validate -d <BDF> reporting the npu being stuck into "performance" mode and also confirmed by running a simple test:
executing into "flm run qwen3.5:2b" the prompt "a website can be made in 10 steps":
PERFORMANCE MODE
Average decoding speed: 23.8301 tokens/s
Average prefill speed: 30.7483 tokens/s
TURBO MODE
Average decoding speed: 23.8648 tokens/s
Average prefill speed: 31.7367 tokens/s
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the reported commands with xrt-smi configure and xrt-smi validate for the affected BDF, then compare the reported power mode and benchmark results. Trace the power-mode handling from the xrt-smi entry point into the NPU configuration path. Done means turbo mode is applied and validate and performance measurements reflect the change.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- ai-infra-agents, performance
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100