Pcie npu as an option at some point?

[Linkinworm]

With windows now requiring basically unreleased CPUs with enough npu power. Has anyone seen or heard of anything in the form of a plugin npu for a standard pc setup?

 

I can't think of anything right now that I'd need to use one for. Maybe the new ss ai upscaler at best but who knows maybe they'll get smarter options for file management or compression or soemthing later down the line.

[Kilrah]

Windows won't care unless you want the upcoming AI features, and then it'll only be supported coprocessors so you'll have to get one of those, whether something standalone comes is to be seen, I'd guess not though.

 

There are some like the Google Coral TPU that can be used for specific applications, but again that's a "depends mostly on your particular application, add the particular hardware that could help it later if you need it".

[adm0n]

There were some dedicated AI accelerator cards, but it mostly doesn't really make sense. If you want to get a dedicated AI accelerator, you can just get an RTX Nvidia GPU or newer AMD/intel GPUs. They all run leaps around any CPU integrated NPU and there is a reason to equip those with a big amount of RAM.

 

Just as an comparison, the new Snapdragon chips come with 45TOPS. The laptop RTX 4060 has over 200 TOPS.

[GuiltySpark_]

For desktop users, this is going to fall on dGPU's white are already hilariously faster than any NPU. 

[Kilrah]

The point will be power consumption, yeah the built-in NPU will be a lot less powerful than a GPU but probably enough for the "common tasks" and all while drawing an order of magnitude or 2 less power.

 

Idea being if you need to run an upscaler you'll use the GPU for that, but if you want to ask Copilot about the weather it doesn't have to spin that up. 

[Doobeedoo]

My brain is an NPU just need that Neuralink interface and I'm set to process the Internet.