Release Notes: Model Download#

Version 2026.1.0-rc1#

May 14, 2026

New

Added a new Pipeline Zoo Models plugin for downloading models from the dlstreamer/pipeline-zoo-models repository.
Isolated Python virtual environments per plugin to prevent dependency conflicts.
Out-of-the-box support for the latest OpenVINO release (any version above 2025.4.1).
Enabled TTS, STT, and image generation model types in the OpenVINO plugin.
Introduced --ovms-release-tag option in run_service.sh to configure the OVMS release version (default: v2025.4.1).
Resolved Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B conversion failure when using a newer OpenVINO release tag.
Upgraded the Ultralytics public model download script to DL Streamer v2026.0.0.
Added Ultralytics INT8 quantization support through config.quantize and added relevant unit test cases
Added rejection of multi-model requests (all, yolo_all, and comma-separated model names) when quantize is set.
Added cleanup when INT8 artifacts are not generated when user sends INT8 request.

Improved

API hub names are now accepted case-insensitively (e.g. Geti, GETI, and HuggingFace all map to their canonical lowercase identifier).
microsoft/Phi3.5-mini-instruct model conversion requires the default OpenVINO version (v2025.4.1); newer versions with transformers>4.55 are not yet compatible.

Known Issues:

Intel does not support Edge Manageability Framework deployment currently.
Due to a limitation in the DL Streamer public model download script, all supported precision artifacts (for example, FP32 and FP16) are downloaded by default even when not requested. When INT8 is specifically requested by user, the other supported precision artifacts are still downloaded along with INT8.

February 20, 2026

New

Implemented component-based model conversion for models not supported by Optimum library.
Added a new Geti™ plugin for downloading models from Geti software.
Enabled the OpenVINO plugin with VLM support.

Improved

Known Issues:

For older release notes, check out: