Dell Now Shipping Laptop with Qualcomm NPU on Linux Ahead of Windows 11

Dell announced today that their new Pro Max 16 Plus laptop with a Qualcomm discrete NPU is now shipping... That is if you are running Ubuntu Linux while the Windows 11 pre-load option is expected in early 2026. An exciting twist with the Linux version of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus shipping before Microsoft Windows.

The new Dell Pro Max 16 Plus features a Qualcomm AI 100 PC inference accelerator. The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus makes it the first mobile workstation with such an "enterprise grade" discrete NPu.

Dell's blog post announcing the availability of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus lays out more details on the hardware in general. While not clearly spelled out in the blog post, Dell reached out directly to note the Linux version of this mobile workstation laptop is shipping today while the Windows 11 version is coming for early 2026. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is Dell's validated Linux operating system for the Pro Max 16 Plus with Qualcomm NPU.

As covered in several Phoronix articles over the past few years, Qualcomm has been working on the Linux driver for the AI 100 accelerator. The kernel driver is in the mainline Linux tree for a while now. I don't have much information on the user-space support for the Qualcomm AI 100 nor have I seen much uptake so far by the prominent AI frameworks and the like. If you do happen to pick up one of these Dell laptops with Qualcomm NPU, make sure you also upgrade to their newly-released firmware files for an important power/performance fix.