NPU (Neural Processing Unit)

A dedicated AI accelerator chip built into modern CPUs and SoCs, designed for efficient low-power inference tasks like background noise removal, image enhancement, and on-device AI assistants. Intel’s Meteor Lake, AMD’s Ryzen AI, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, and Apple’s Neural Engine all include NPUs. For heavy AI workloads like running LLMs, NPUs are currently too slow compared to GPUs — but they handle lightweight AI features with minimal battery impact.