What the heck is an NPU, anyway? Here’s an explainer on AI chips [Video]

CPUs and GPUs are old news. These days, the cutting edge is all about NPUs, and hardware manufacturers are talking up NPU performance.

The NPU is a computer component designed to accelerate AI tasks in a power-efficient manner, paving the way for new Windows desktop applications with powerful AI features. That’s the plan, anyway.

All PCs will eventually have NPUs, but at the moment only some PCs have them. Here’s everything you need to know about NPUs and why they’re such a hot topic in the computer industry right now.

NPU stands for neural processing unit. It’s a special kind of processor that’s optimized for AI and machine learning tasks.

The name comes from the fact that AI models use neural networks. A neural network is, in layman’s terms, a vast mesh of interconnected nodes that pass information between them. (The whole idea was modeled after the way our own human brains work.)

Related: How neural …