nputop

Your Ascend NPUs, at a glance.

An interactive NPU and process monitor for the terminal. Familiar nvitop controls, with Ascend card/chip topology, live resource graphs and process management.

English · 简体中文 · Installation · Usage · Supported devices · Changelog

Ascend 910C · 8 cards / 16 chips · DCMI · Full view. Click to see the original screenshot.

Why nputop?

• See the whole machine. NPU memory, AICore, utilization, temperature, power, clocks and bandwidth alongside CPU, RAM and SWAP history.
• Find the process behind the load. Click a process to highlight its chips; inspect its tree, resource history or environment, then manage it from the same screen.
• Built for Ascend. Single- and multi-chip cards, logical device IDs, 310P memory interfaces and 910C's dual-die layout get their own handling.
• Keep your workflow. Keyboard and mouse navigation, full/compact layouts, light terminals, color gradients and ASCII support.
• Stay responsive. DCMI collection runs outside the UI. Automatic npu-smi fallback keeps monitoring available when the primary backend fails.

Installation

Requires Python 3.7+, Linux and an installed Ascend driver. No PyACL or NVIDIA NVML Python package is needed.

PyPI

python -m pip install --upgrade ascend-nputop

Conda

Available on conda-forge:

conda install -c conda-forge nputop

uv

Run in an isolated environment without installing into your project:

uvx --from ascend-nputop nputop

Or install it as a persistent command:

uv tool install --upgrade ascend-nputop

The package is ascend-nputop on PyPI/uv and nputop on Conda. All provide the nputop command. uv uses PyPI by default, so it receives the same published package.

git clone https://github.com/youyve/nputop.git
cd nputop
python -m pip install -e .

Usage

nputop

Start with the automatic layout, or tailor the view to your session:

nputop --monitor full
nputop --only 0 2
nputop --user
nputop --interval 1
nputop --light --colorful
nputop --readonly

The default interval is two seconds. --only selects display IDs; use ASCEND_RT_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 nputop --only-visible to filter by runtime logical IDs.

Process signals require a selected or marked target and confirmation. As in nvitop, k/K requests SIGKILL; use ↑↓ or Alt-k / Alt-j to move the selection. Ctrl-C requests SIGINT inside the TUI; use q to quit.

nputop --backend dcmi
nputop --backend smi
nputop --once
nputop --json
nputop --diagnose > nputop-diagnostics.json
nputop --ascii
nputop --legacy-ui
nputop --help

Supported devices

• Ascend 910B
• Ascend 910C / Atlas A3, including dual-die cards
• Ascend 310P
• Ascend 310B, via the npu-smi backend

Available metrics depend on the device and driver. See device compatibility for model-specific details.

AICore and UTL use distinct counters; 310P's AICore fallback is labeled UTL*. Power references are labeled Ref, and same-card power is grouped on dual-die devices. See power sources and interpretation.

Contributing

Bug reports, device feedback and pull requests are welcome. Open an issue with your model and driver version; nputop --diagnose produces a report without process IDs, commands or environment contents.

For development and hardware checks, see the contributor guide. Release maintainers can follow the PyPI / Conda / uv release guide.

License and credits

Based on nvitop by Xuehai Pan. The project contains Apache-2.0 and GPL-3.0-only modules; consult the file headers, LICENSE, COPYING and NOTICE. Maintained by Lianzhong You.