For some time now, when buying a laptop you should not only take into account the processor that is inside and which, to a large extent, is responsible for offering more performance or smaller. autonomy. Furthermore, we must also take into account power who is able to offer the NPU.
The NPU, known as Neural processing unitis the one who is responsible for carrying out the tasks related to the Artificial intelligence locally, that is to say without depending on an Internet connection. Intel, AMD Yes Qualcomm (the latest to arrive on the laptop processor market with ARM architecture) integrates an NPU dedicated to these tasks.
If we talk about Qualcomm’s NPU in its processors, we are talking about the first generation. Concerning AMD, we are currently in the third generation with the launch of Ryzen AI 300. The first was the one included in the Ryzen7040 while the second is found in the Ryzen 8040.
Evolution of the Intel NPU
But what about Intel? Intel has released a patch for the Linux kernel in which, according to the guys from Phoronix, you can read that the next generation of Intel laptop processors, the 300 series, will have a new generation of NPUspecifies the 5th. How can it be the fifth and have only launched two ranges of processors with NPU?
Theory says that the first NPU we know of at Intel was the one found in the Intel Core Ultra 100 Series and that it had a computing power of 11.5 TOPS. Intel’s second NPU is the one currently found in processors Intel Core Ultra 200 Series with a computing power of 48 TOPS, thus entering the name PC with AI from Microsoft.
But the next one will be the 5th generation, according to the notes found in the Linux kernel update we discussed. Based on this information, it is logical to ask the question: where are the other generations of Intel NPUs?
Well, it turns out that Intel’s evolution with NPUs isn’t like that. Intel’s first NPU, or 1st generation NPU It dates from 2018 and offered a ridiculous computing power of only 0.5 TOPS. The second generation dates from 2021 and had the 7 TOPS calculation. These are the two generations that were missing from the equation and it was therefore difficult to understand how it is possible that the Intel Core Ultra 300 Series arrive with the 5th generation.
Seeing how the computing power of Intel NPUs has evolved from one year to the next, going from 11.5 TOPS of Intel Core Ultra Series 1 processors to 48 TOPS of Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors, we can afford to assert that this next generation will approach 100 TOPS of computing power.
Qualcomm, like AMD, is already working on the next generation of processors with NPU for portable equipment. Currently, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD offer virtually the same computing power for AI tasks, so it seems that the evolution in this area seems to be the same for all manufacturers.
