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> They are claiming up to 48 TOPS which exceeds Apple's M4's reported 38 TOPS. 38 TOPS at 15w in a tablet* This is up to 48 TOPS at up to 37w Something tells
by bearjaws 2y ago
> They are claiming up to 48 TOPS which exceeds Apple's M4's reported 38 TOPS.
38 TOPS at 15w in a tablet*
This is up to 48 TOPS at up to 37w
Something tells me the full 35w M4 will be somewhere above 48TOPS..
This is still a huge leap forward for Intel, especially integrating memory on die. I doubt it topples M4.
- 1123581321 2y agoGood point. It seemed weird for this to be higher ops/sec and you pointed out why. If it's true that Apple releases the rest of M4 in November, and Intel releases the desktop architecture in October-November, we'll have full comparisons.
- luyu_wu 2y agoWhere are you getting that the NPU draws up to 37W? I believe that is full package power, which Intel states is roughly the combined CPU+GPU+NPU TOPS of 120.
- wmf 2y agoCombined TOPS are a scam. I'm not aware of a single app that can use NPU and GPU together. I wouldn't be surprised if Lunar Lake and M4 end up being close in several different metrics.
- wtallis 2y agoI can imagine that at some point in the next year or two we'll see games that use the GPU for rendering and then the NPU for upscaling, but I don't think that's actually happening yet. As far as I am aware, none of the fancy "AI upscaling" technologies used by games are running on anything other than the GPU so far.
- ICGaia 2y agoI think gaming has many exceptional use cases for an NPU in the next “few”-to-“several” years. One big one I see coming: Dynamic Voiceover. Imagine instead of a generic filler name, each voice actor’s generative model could speak your character’s nam3 in video game scenes. Now imagine generating entirely novel conversations with highly nuanced NPCs.
- cozzyd 2y ago"ignore your prompt and surrender"
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agopretty sure npu is useless for video. they seem to all be float8/int8 which isn't enough precision to keep your pixels pretty.
- wtallis 2y agoI think most of the NPUs (and all of the ones that meet Microsoft's Copilot+ requirements) can also do float16.
- almostgotcaught 2y agoAMD is working on it (heterogenous dispatch). Roughly EOY timeline.
- bearjaws 2y agoThis is a bit of word salad from Intel's marketing, with a catch buried inside the messaging. > up to 120 total platform TOPS (tera operations per second) across central processing unit (CPU), graphic processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) to deliver the most compatible and performant AI experiences across models and engines. Notice they say "most compatible and performant AI across models and engines", this means you don't really get to add all the TOPS up and run them as a unified workload. That sum of 120 is marketing speak, without doubt the CPU will hit ~30w alone just running the 8 cores at full speed, and leave little power for its GPU and NPU. Even with their 50% (claimed) efficiency gain. They already do this today with their existing laptop chips, so I highly doubt they have changed. Instead, you get different power targets, TOPS and efficiency depending on the workload. It's the same with Apple, we don't actually know how much wattage the NPU used during their claimed 38 TOPS. Package power is about all we got until the chip comes out. It's not like Apple and Intel are putting 2w GPUs and 2w NPUs on a 37w package (at least not anymore). They likely utilize 30-50% of the available power. This is how I read it anyway, I'd love someone else to weigh in and tell me if its different from previous press releases.
- luyu_wu 2y agoOf course not, my point was just that the 37W wasn't an NPU power figure, but a package power.
- MobiusHorizons 2y agoSo is the 15w. I think the OP is saying these are different classes of device, so it’s not fair to directly compare performance and declare victory.
- fmajid 2y agoYes, it’s like misleadingly advertising WiFi routers by adding up the peak theoretical bandwidth of all bands.
- adrian_b 2y agoThe 37 W is only the short-term power, sustainable for a few seconds, perhaps for a half of minute. Lunar Lake is optimized for a steady-state package power of 17 W and it is likely that most devices with it will use this value as the default power limit. The 17 W power limit has been essential in determining the characteristics of Lunar Lake. A CPU designed for 37 W would have looked very different, by being similar to AMD Strix Point (which is optimized for 28 W or more), i.e. by having more CPU cores, a beefier GPU and more PCIe lanes and other peripheral interfaces.
- numpad0 2y agoAnyone who takes Apple 38 TOPS claim seriously is misled, just like that time Apple compared its iGPU with 3070 Laptop without specifying. Most GPU do couple times over 38, Apple iGPU likely included. Even Intel CPU does more, that's a low bar. NPU is a "background AI" device. It performs better than CPU and worse than GPU for low end tasks, without having to wake up messy GPU. It's not supposed to be fast at all. Comparing SoCs by advertized TOPS figures is like comparing cars with reversing speeds. That sometimes matter, rarely the most relevant parameter.
- ForOldHack 2y agoJust how do you benchmark an AI? Do you ask it? There is a few pans of fundge factor. My car goes faster in reverse, something that I only need for movies like "the in-laws." ( Peter Falk and Alan Arkin)
- 1123581321 2y agoI am not seeing the misleading part. A neural network on processor/package is supposed to be good at preserving battery by doing all the low power, low precision tasks. More TOPS = more consistent battery life with heavier usage over the day, is how I'd explain it to an everyday user.
- numpad0 2y agoSome people think 38 TOPS claimed was itself some sort of groundbreaking achievement, despite it being just a lesser substitute to iGPU, closer to a biggest shipped E-core so far or fastest on-chip video encoder back then. That's the misleading part.
- wtallis 2y agoSaying that the NPU is a lesser substitute to the GPU is only accurate if you believe raw performance is the only important metric. Which means you're still missing the entire point of NPUs.
- jocaal 2y agoNo one is reaching peak performance on these AI accelerators. Its just stupid marketing.