Canonical Launches Certified Ubuntu Images for Qualcomm's Edge AI Dragonwing IQ-9075
Official builds bring full support, up to a 15-year lifespan, and the promise of access to up to 100 TOPS of on-device compute for AI.
Canonical has announced that the Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ-9075 system-on-chip has been added to the growing number of devices officially supported by its Ubuntu Linux distribution — offering "optimized images" of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS in both Ubuntu Server and Desktop variants.
“We are delighted to deepen our collaboration with Canonical by bringing certified Ubuntu support to the Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ-9075 processor," says Qualcomm's Laxmi Rayapudi of its partnership with Canonical. "The IQ-9075 is designed for the most compute-intensive industrial tasks. Providing certified Ubuntu images – optimized and supported by Canonical – gives our ODMs [Original Design Manufacturers] and customers an essential, trusted software layer to deliver security-focused, high-performance edge solutions to market faster."
That Canonical has been working on official Ubuntu support for the Dragonwing IQ-9075 is no secret: the company had already made an uncertified "early release" of its Ubuntu Linux distribution available back in August, when it announced fully-qualified builds for the Qualcomm Dragonwing QCS6490 and QCS5430 chips. This new release, though, upgrades the support to official certification.
Designed for edge artificial intelligence (edge AI) projects, the Dragonwing IQ-9075 includes eight Arm-based Kyro Gold Prime high-performance processor cores plus accelerators delivering a claimed 100 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of on-device minimum-precision compute for machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads.
"Ubuntu on Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ-9075 will accelerate the launch of AI-ready industrial devices at scale. This partnership will ensure high performance and robust security at both the hardware and software level," claims Canonical's Olivier Philippe. "Manufacturers using Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ-9075 platform will not only be ready for long term support and maintenance, but also benefit from the full power of open source AI software innovations optimized for the Dragonwing IQ-9075."
The qualified Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server images are now available on the Ubuntu Qualcomm IoT Platforms download page.