WHAT IS AN NPU?

The latest specialist chips put AI at your fingertips. Darien Graham-Smith finds out what’s new in neural processing

We’re all familiar with the CPU and the GPU – they sit at the heart of almost every PC made in the past 40 years (albeit the GPU has sometimes been built into the CPU). Lately, though, they’ve been joined by a new friend: the neural processing unit, or NPU. NPUs aren’t a brand-new idea. The first implementations appeared, with little fanfare, in mobile chipsets in 2017. But in the past few years, as AI workloads have exploded onto the scene, they’ve become more and more important. Today it could be reasonably argued that the rise of this new type of processor is the most significant development in systems architecture in 50 years. The reason is that, while the NPU is simpler and more specialised than either the CPU or GPU, it…

You're reading a preview of

PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.