Neural processing unit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:43, 24 July 2025

Revision as of 16:34, 27 July 2025

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{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2021}}

A '''neural processing unit''' ('''NPU'''), also known as '''AI accelerator''' or '''deep learning processor,''', is a class of specialized [[hardware acceleration|hardware accelerator]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3014293/intel-unveils-movidius-compute-stick-usb-ai-accelerator |title=Intel unveils Movidius Compute Stick USB AI Accelerator |date=July 21, 2017 |access-date=August 11, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170811193632/https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3014293/intel-unveils-movidius-compute-stick-usb-ai-accelerator |archive-date=August 11, 2017 }}</ref> or computer system<ref>{{cite web |url=https://insidehpc.com/2017/06/inspurs-unveils-gx4-ai-accelerator/ |title=Inspurs unveils GX4 AI Accelerator |date=June 21, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{citation |title=Neural Magic raises $15 million to boost AI inferencing speed on off-the-shelf processors |last=Wiggers |first=Kyle |date=November 6, 2019 |url=https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/06/neural-magic-raises-15-million-to-boost-ai-training-speed-on-off-the-shelf-processors/ |publication-date=November 6, 2019 |orig-date=2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200306120524/https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/06/neural-magic-raises-15-million-to-boost-ai-training-speed-on-off-the-shelf-processors/ |archive-date=March 6, 2020 |access-date=March 14, 2020}}</ref> designed to accelerate [[artificial intelligence]] (AI) and [[machine learning]] applications, including [[artificial neural network]]s and [[computer vision]].

==Use==

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=== Consumer devices ===

AI accelerators are used in mobile devices such as Apple [[iPhone]]s, AMD [[AI engine|AI engines]]<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brown |first=Nick |date=2023-02-12 |title=Exploring the Versal AI Engines for Accelerating Stencil-based Atmospheric Advection Simulation |url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543622.3573047 |journal=Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays |series=FPGA '23 |___location=New York, NY, USA |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |pages=91–97 |doi=10.1145/3543622.3573047 |isbn=978-1-4503-9417-8|arxiv=2301.13016 }}</ref> in Versal and NPUs, [[Huawei]], and [[Google Pixel]] smartphones,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://consumer.huawei.com/en/press/news/2017/ifa2017-kirin970|title=HUAWEI Reveals the Future of Mobile AI at IFA}}</ref> and seen in many [[Apple silicon|Apple Silicon]], [[Qualcomm]], [[Samsung]], and [[Google Tensor]] smartphone processors.<ref>{{Cite web| title=Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform | url=https://docs.qualcomm.com/bundle/publicresource/87-71408-1_REV_B_Snapdragon_8_gen_3_Mobile_Platform_Product_Brief.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231025162610/https://docs.qualcomm.com/bundle/publicresource/87-71408-1_REV_B_Snapdragon_8_gen_3_Mobile_Platform_Product_Brief.pdf | archive-date=2023-10-25}}</ref>

It is more recently (circa 2022) added to computer processors from [[Intel]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intels-lunar-lake-processors-arriving-q3-2024.html|title=Intel's Lunar Lake Processors Arriving Q3 2024|website=Intel|date=May 20, 2024 }}</ref> [[AMD]],<ref>{{cite web|title=AMD XDNA Architecture|url=https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/xdna.html}}</ref> and [[Apple silicon]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Deploying Transformers on the Apple Neural Engine |url=https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/neural-engine-transformers |access-date=2023-08-24 |website=Apple Machine Learning Research |language=en-US}}</ref> All models of Intel [[Meteor Lake]] processors have a built-in ''versatile processor unit'' (''VPU'') for accelerating [[statistical inference|inference]] for computer vision and deep learning.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcmag.com/news/intel-to-bring-a-vpu-processor-unit-to-14th-gen-meteor-lake-chips|title=Intel to Bring a 'VPU' Processor Unit to 14th Gen Meteor Lake Chips|website=PCMAG|date=August 2022 }}</ref>

On consumer devices, the NPU is intended to be small, power-efficient, but reasonably fast when used to run small models. To do this they are designed to support low-bitwidth operations using data types such as INT4, INT8, FP8, and FP16. A common metric is trillions of operations per second (TOPS), though this metric alone does not quantify which kind of operations are being done.<ref>{{cite web |title=A guide to AI TOPS and NPU performance metrics |url=https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2024/04/a-guide-to-ai-tops-and-npu-performance-metrics}}</ref>

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Mobile NPU vendors typically provide their own [[application programming interface]] such as the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine. An operating system or a higher-level library may provide a more generic interface such as TensorFlow Lite with LiteRT Next (Android) or CoreML (iOS, macOS).

Consumer CPU-integrated NPUs are accessible through vendor-specific APIs. AMD (Ryzen AI), Intel (OpenVINO), Apple Siliconsilicon (CoreML){{efn|MLX builds atop the CPU and GPU parts, not the Apple Neural Engine (ANE) part of Apple Silicon chips. The relatively good performance is due to the use of a large, fast [[unified memory]] design.}} each have their own APIs, which can be built upon by a higher-level library.

GPUs generally use existing [[GPGPU]] pipelines such as CUDA and OpenCL adapted for lower precisions. Custom-built systems such as the Google TPU use private interfaces.

== References Notes==

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== References ==

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== External links ==