Term explained
What is an NPU (neural processing unit)?
An NPU is a part of a phone or laptop chip designed specifically to run AI tasks quickly while using little battery.
In plain English
Most devices have a main processor (the CPU) for general work and a graphics processor (the GPU) for images and games. An NPU, short for neural processing unit, is a third kind of processor built for one job: the maths behind AI models. It does that maths much more efficiently than the other two, so AI features run faster and drain less battery.
Phone makers have included NPUs for several years, and laptops now advertise them too, often under labels such as “AI PC”. Their speed is measured in TOPS, trillions of operations per second.
Why it matters
An NPU lets some AI run on your own device instead of in a distant data centre. That makes features such as live captions, background blur on video calls, photo editing and offline translation quicker, and it keeps your data on your device.
An example
During a video call on a laptop with an NPU, the background blur and noise cancellation run on the NPU. The main processor stays free for your other apps, and the battery lasts noticeably longer than on an older laptop doing the same work.
What to watch out for
An NPU does not make chatbots like ChatGPT faster, because they run in data centres. A higher TOPS number also doesn’t guarantee a better experience: memory, software and battery matter too. See what powers AI for whether an “AI” device is worth it.