A few months ago, I acquired several AI accelerators – Habana Labs Goya, the first generation of inference-dedicated TPC (Tensor Processing Core) devices.
These HL-100 PCIe cards are built around a single Goya processor and designed to accelerate a wide range of AI inference workloads.
However, upon installation, the cards failed to initialise properly. After some digging, I managed to bring them back to life — and here’s how I did it, in case it helps others working with legacy or specialised hardware.
🧰 Requirements
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (x86-64)
Free PCIe slot (I used a Dell T3600 as a test system)
🛠️ Initial Setup
After physically installing the Goya card and booting the system, you may encounter firmware errors due to missing components.
The device uses U-Boot and an embedded Linux environment.
Go to Habana’s APT repository:
đź”— https://lnkd.in/d5d9ugch
Download these packages using wget:
habanalabs-dkms v1.1.1-94
habanalabs-firmware v1.1.1-94
habanalabs-firmware-odm v1.16.0-526
habana-firmware-tools v1.1.1-94
habanalabs-think 1.1.1-94
habanatools 1.1.1-94
Once installed, reboot your system but do not load the drivers yet via modprobe.
🧯 The Fix: Firmware Recovery
In my case, the Goya cards shipped with corrupted firmware, causing the following kernel log errors:
habanalabs_en: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing – tainting kernel
habanalabs_en: loading driver, version: 1.1.1-0ca2d0bc5
habanalabs: loading driver, version: 1.1.1-0ca2d0bc5
habanalabs 0000:0d:00.0: habanalabs device found [1da3:0001] (rev 1)
habanalabs hl0: BTL version 0b2b7d3f
habanalabs hl0: preboot version 3.0.1
habanalabs hl0: Going to wait for device boot (up to 15s)
habanalabs hl0: boot-fit version 3.0.1
habanalabs hl0: Loading firmware to device, may take some time…
habanalabs hl0: Device reports FIT image is corrupt
habanalabs hl0: failed to initialize CPU
habanalabs hl0: failed to initialize the H/W
habanalabs 0000:0d:00.0: Failed to initialize hl0. Device is NOT usable !
🔨 To recover:
1) Switch to root: sudo su
2) Navigate to /usr/sbin/ and run:
hl-fw-loader -r
This re-flashes the firmware (ignore warnings if any).
3) Reboot the system again.
Now, load the drivers in the following order:
sudo modprobe habanalabs_compat
sudo modprobe habanalabs
sudo modprobe habanalabs_cn
sudo modprobe habanalabs_en
sudo modprobe habanalabs_ib
Run hl-smi to verify — and you’re done! ✅