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GAIA supports running agents on your AMD Ryzen AI NPU via the FastFlowLM (FLM) backend. NPU inference is power-efficient and frees your GPU for other tasks.

Requirements

  • Hardware: AMD Ryzen AI 300/400/Max series processor with XDNA2 NPU
    • Strix Point, Strix Halo, Kraken Point, or Gorgon Point
    • Ryzen AI 7000/8000/200-series (XDNA1) is not supported
  • Software: Lemonade Server v10.2.0+
  • Driver: Latest AMD NPU driver (firmware v1.1.0.0+)
Ryzen AI 7000/8000/200-series chips have XDNA1 NPUs which are not supported by FastFlowLM. Use --device gpu instead.

Linux

NPU inference works on Linux the same way — run gaia init --profile npu and Lemonade Server installs the FLM backend automatically. If Lemonade detects that your system needs additional setup (for example, the amdxdna kernel driver on older kernels), it will point you to the Lemonade Linux FLM guide with distro-specific steps. Follow them, then re-run gaia init --profile npu.

Setup

Initialize GAIA with the NPU profile:
This will:
  1. Verify NPU hardware is detected
  2. Install the FLM backend (flm:npu)
  3. Download the NPU-optimized models (gemma4-it-e2b-FLM for chat, embed-gemma-300m-FLM for documents and memory)
  4. Install the GAIA agent if it is missing, the same agent a bare gaia init installs
  5. Run a verification test and make NPU the default device
The Agent UI and terminal UI then have an agent to talk to. If GAIA’s download server can’t be reached, setup still downloads the models, then reports itself incomplete and exits 1 — run gaia init --profile npu again once the network is back. To return to the GPU, run gaia config set default_device gpu.

Usage

CLI

Agent UI

  1. Launch with gaia chat --ui
  2. The Agent UI uses your default device. After gaia init --profile npu that is the NPU; switch with gaia config set default_device gpu (or npu)

Evaluation

Compare agent quality across devices:

Device Selection

Fallback Behavior

  • Explicit --device npu: fails immediately if NPU not available
  • Default (no --device): uses GPU; falls back to CPU with a warning if no GPU detected

Troubleshooting

NPU not detected

Verify your hardware:
  1. Check processor model supports XDNA2 (Ryzen AI 300+ series)
  2. Ensure NPU driver is installed: check Device Manager (Windows) or lspci | grep NPU (Linux)
  3. Try lemonade backends to see available backends

FLM backend installation fails

Install manually:

Model not available

The FLM backend is missing, not the model. Lemonade discovers *-FLM models through the FLM runtime itself, so until flm:npu is installed none of them exist to pull. Install the backend first, then pull by name:
Do not add --recipe flm. The recipe is baked into the built-in model and applied at load time; passing it turns the call into a custom-model registration, which fails asking for --checkpoint.