A short Introduction to Neural Processing Unit (NPU)

NPUs is a specialized processor designed to accelerate the algorithms that involve the neural network task. NPU are optimized for matrix arithmetic operations. 

Advantage:

·       NPU processes trillions of matrix multiply operations per second. 

·       NPU is more efficient for matrix operations compare to CPU and GPU

·       Since Matrix operations are going to offload on NPU, CPU can be utilized for other computations.

·       Applications that has matrix operations like machine learning, deep learning algorithms can benefit from NPU.  

·       NPU is currently available in in most consumer-facing gadgets such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, the NPU is integrated within the main processor, adopting a System-on-Chip (SoC) configuration.

Advantage:

·       NPU processes trillions of matrix multiply operations per second. 

·       NPU is more efficient for matrix operations compare to CPU and GPU.

·       Since Matrix operations are going to offload on NPU, CPU can be utilized for other computations.

·       Applications that has matrix operations like machine learning, deep learning algorithms can benefit from NPU.  

·       NPU is currently available in the most consumer-facing gadgets such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, the NPU is integrated within the main processor, adopting a System-on-Chip (SoC) configuration.

Key Features of NPUs:

• Productivity: NPUs are designed to handle AI-related tasks like speech recognition, image processing, and video editing more efficiently than traditional processors.
• Integration:  NPUs can be often integrated into larger systems, and NPUs work alongside CPUs and GPUs and increase the overall system performance.
• Flexibility: NPUs are flexible and can be integrated with CPUs and GPUs. NPUs offer more complexity and flexibility, catering to diverse AI and neural network demands.
• Performance Improvement: NPUs will improve the overall system performance.
• Efficient: NPUs are efficient to handle the AI related task.  

Applications:

• Smartphones: NPUs are used in smartphones, it provides the AI features like camera enhancements, video stabilizations and voice assistants.
• Laptop: Currently CPUs are integrated with NPUs. Companies like Intel and AMD are providing the laptops based on NPU.
• Cloud Computing: Date servers use large AI based workloads. NPUs are useful for edge processing also. NPUs will reduce the latency and bandwidth usage.
• Automotive: Autonomous driving area will make use of the NPUs, because it will process the real time data faster.
• Healthcare: NPUs can be use in wearable devices and can detect the anomalies faster.

Useful links:

1. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/neural_processor