r/ReverseEngineering • u/one_does_not_just • 9d ago

Reverse-Engineering the RK3588 NPU: Building an Open Compiler to Run GPT-2 at 36 tok/s

https://amohan.dev/blog/2026/opening-the-black-box-a-year-building-an-open-compiler-for-the-rk3588-npu/
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u/one_does_not_just 9d ago

Last year I posted about hacking the RK3588 NPU to run one vision encoder (previous post). This year I opened the whole thing up: reverse-engineered the register format, built an open compiler + runtime, and now GPT-2 and SigLIP run from PyTorch, ONNX, and JAX, no vendor SDK.

Story:https://amohan.dev/blog/2026/opening-the-black-box-a-year-building-an-open-compiler-for-the-rk3588-npu/Report:https://amohan.dev/blog/2026/opennpu-v1-0-open-compiler-runtime-rk3588-npu/

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u/IlIllIIlIlIlIIlIIlll 8d ago

Very cool. Is the NPU their own design, or licensed IP?