Ahead of the first Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake laptops expected to hit retail channels next week, Intel has published updated IPU7 (IPU 7.5) firmware for the image processing unit used by the web cameras on the higher-end Panther Lake laptops.

Some Panther Lake laptops on the lower-end will still rely on USB-based web cameras but for the premium experience is the Intel IPU 7.5 IP via MIPI. Back in Arizona Intel talked up the IPU 7.5 capabilities for a leading web camera experience.

Besides needing the firmware binaries, the recent Intel IPU going back to Alder Lake is dependent upon closed-source user-space libraries for making use of the IP otherwise needing to fallback to libcamera's software-based image signal processing running on the CPU rather than the dedicated IPU hardware. With Panther Lake and IPU 7.5 it's still that way with closed-source libraries .

With the new Intel Panther Lake IPU firmware there are "some new features" but not elaborating on those changes. Plus fixes and a new signing key:

- New signing key to support PRQ-ed Panther Lake chips
- Add some new features
- Fix some bugs

The updated Panther Lake IPU firmware can be found via linux-firmware.git ahead of the first of the Panther Lake laptops hitting store shelves next week. One way or another, Intel Panther Lake Linux benchmarks coming soon on Phoronix.