It is increasingly common to hear that a device integrates an NPU, especially those that are oriented to use the functions of intelligence artificial that some companies offer us. Many people may not know what these acronyms are or what they mean, but it is not something too complicated to understand, so today we are going to explain it to you. what isWhat is it for and where can you find one? NPU.
It is normal that if we are not very involved in the computer sector, we get lost every time a company starts naming components that we may not have heard of before. For this same reason, today we are going to tell you about one of the fashionable components, the NPU.
What is an NPU?
Starting with the first thing, you need to know what these acronyms mean, and if you have technical knowledge in computer systems and you are a bit smart, you will have seen that the name has a similarity with the technical name of processors, that is, processors. . The name of NPU comes from “Neural processing unit“, and it is a type of processor that aims to allow devices that integrate it to improve the artificial intelligence capabilities they offer, since it aims to perform operations in a neural network.
These networks are the mechanism on which all current artificial intelligences run, and they essentially try to reproduce the functioning of a biological organism, as we can imagine from its name. In summary and without going into too many technical aspects, these networks essentially aim to predict a result based on the type of parameters that we indicate, that is, we indicate what we want an image to be using text, the AI processes it using a neural network what we have indicated, compares it with other content and from there creates what we have asked it to.
Well, the NPU is the brain (pun intended) that is responsible for performing all these operations, and the computing power it has is measured in TOPS (Tera Operations per Second), which tells us the billions of operations that a system can perform. perform per second. As you can imagine, the more TOPS an NPU includes, the greater its power. For example, it is necessary for one of these processors to include a minimum of 40 TOPS to be able to use Microsoft’s AI, Copilot.
Where can we find it?
In general, it is not too complicated to find this type of processor, and many laptops and mobile phones usually integrate it, since they are usually present in most current SoCs, that is, in chips that combine CPU, GPU, NPU and other additional components, including soldered storage and RAM.
If we want to take one as an example, we can look at Apple’s M3, since the company has long used the SoC format to integrate chips into its devices, which is also one of the main reasons why laptops that integrate these chips You can’t increase memory or storage.
