GPU plugin Level Zero support

June 2, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

OpenVINO GPU plugin can be compiled with experimental Level Zero support. When enabled, plugin will use Level Zero as GPU compute API instead of OpenCL.

How to build with Level Zero support

  1. Configure cmake with the following additional option:
    • -DGPU_RT_TYPE=ZE
  2. Build OpenVINO
    • cmake --build . --config Release

How to check what runtime is used

With DEBUG_CAPS cmake option

  1. Prerequisite: Build OpenVINO with DEBUG_CAPS cmake option
  2. Set OV_VERBOSE=1 environment variable.
  3. Run workload
  4. Find what variant of stream is reported in the logs (ze_stream or ocl_stream)
    • Example output for Level Zero runtime: ze_stream: [GPU] Created Level Zero stream

Without DEBUG_CAPS

  • You can check by which library is loaded.
    • In Linux, use strace to check which so is loaded
    • In Windows, you can use dependency walker
  • You can use clintercept to check whether it has OpenCL call or not.