NPU
What is neural processing unit (NPU)?
A neural processing unit (NPU) is a specialized hardware component designed to accelerate machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. NPUs are optimized for the specific mathematical operations required for neural networks, such as matrix multiplication, convolution, and activation functions.NPUs can be found in various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and cloud servers. They significantly enhance the performance and efficiency of AI processing compared to traditional CPUs and GPUs. The key features of NPUs include:
- Parallel processing capabilities, enabling them to handle numerous calculations simultaneously.
- Low power consumption, which makes them suitable for mobile and edge devices.
- High throughput for handling large volumes of data, crucial for real-time AI applications.
As AI becomes more integrated into technology, NPUs are increasingly important for enabling faster and more efficient processing of complex algorithms. They play a vital role in applications such as image recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous systems.
Source: YouTube
- Snippet from Wikipedia: AI accelerator
An AI accelerator, deep learning processor or neural processing unit (NPU) is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, including artificial neural networks and computer vision. Typical applications include algorithms for robotics, Internet of Things, and other data-intensive or sensor-driven tasks. They are often manycore designs and generally focus on low-precision arithmetic, novel dataflow architectures or in-memory computing capability. As of 2024, a typical AI integrated circuit chip contains tens of billions of MOSFETs.
AI accelerators are used in mobile devices such as Apple iPhones and Huawei cellphones, and personal computers such as Intel laptops, AMD laptops and Apple silicon Macs. Accelerators are used in cloud computing servers, including tensor processing units (TPU) in Google Cloud Platform and Trainium and Inferentia chips in Amazon Web Services. A number of vendor-specific terms exist for devices in this category, and it is an emerging technology without a dominant design.
Graphics processing units designed by companies such as Nvidia and AMD often include AI-specific hardware, and are commonly used as AI accelerators, both for training and inference.
Related:
- CPU
- GPU
External links:
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