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Wave Open Firmware

Wave NPU Device Manifests

Manifests bind research claims to exact device and firmware evidence.

A marketing name or apparent firmware version is not enough for native NPU work. The executable probe, model, userspace runtime, graph target, kernel, and observable NPU state all matter. A manifest therefore records hashes and evidence provenance rather than treating a filename as identity.

Evidence values

Section titled “Evidence values”

Fields use one of these evidence labels:

  • observed-live — returned by the connected Wave during the dated collection session;
  • static-verified — derived from a named, hashed local firmware artifact or source file;
  • observed-and-static-verified — live bytes and the local artifact agree;
  • inferred — supported by evidence, but not directly identified by the device;
  • unknown — deliberately unresolved.

An inferred firmware label must never be promoted to observed-live merely because its library hashes match. It may be described as “v1.1.6.6-compatible rootfs” while the product-level release identifier remains unknown.

Privacy

Section titled “Privacy”

Tracked manifests do not include:

  • ADB serial numbers;
  • Wi-Fi or Bluetooth identifiers;
  • device credentials or keys;
  • audio samples;
  • user data;
  • complete process lists;
  • complete kernel logs.

Use a stable research alias such as wave-lab-unit-a.

Updating a manifest

Section titled “Updating a manifest”

Create a new manifest rather than silently changing an old baseline when any of these changes:

  • kernel identity;
  • libnnsdk.so, libovxlib.so, libArchModelSw.so, or related runtime hash;
  • model hash;
  • NBG version or target product;
  • probe hash;
  • device hardware revision;
  • behavior of the known semantic control.

A new observation on the same exact stack may append a dated validation record, provided historical evidence remains intact.

Required content

Section titled “Required content”

A useful manifest records:

  • evidence cutoff and collection context;
  • privacy-preserving target alias;
  • kernel and rootfs identity;
  • /dev/galcore identity and relevant read-only parameters;
  • artifact path, byte size, SHA-256, role, and evidence;
  • NBG version, product target, tensor metadata, and known output;
  • PoC run IDs and definition hash;
  • unchanged-state and cleanup evidence;
  • uncertainties and explicit non-claims;
  • bounded commands or harness version used to collect the facts.

Validation

Section titled “Validation”

The files are ordinary JSON so they remain usable without third-party tools:

Terminal window
python3 -m json.tool \
  docs/npu/manifests/wave-live-v1.1.6.6.json >/dev/null

The executable gate remains waved/scripts/npu/experiments.json. A manifest documents evidence; it does not itself authorize or construct a remote command.