Intel's Next-gen 'Panther Lake' CPUs To Feature Enhanced Neural Processing Units
This will be Intel's third major modification to its NPU design for the Core Ultra line
Intel has declared that its future Panther Lake CPUs, which are slated to be named Core Ultra 300, would incorporate a significant boost to the company's Neural Processing Unit (NPU), named NPU5.
2024 has been an important year for the incorporation of AI into consumer devices, notably laptops and desktops. While AI is currently not a major element influencing consumer purchasing decisions, this is likely to change with the debut of Intel's new Core Ultra 200 desktop CPUs, which are the first to include a dedicated neural processing unit. However, the current generation of integrated NPUs is limited in its ability to tackle complicated AI tasks, and GPUs are still necessary for more demanding workloads such as huge language models and powerful generative AI models.
Intel's Panther Lake CPUs are expected to expand on this foundation with a new NPU, known as NPU5, that will outperform prior generations. This will be Intel's third major modification to its NPU design for the Core Ultra line. The NPU5 is expected to surpass the NPU4 featured in the next Lunar Lake CPUs, which has already provided a threefold gain in INT8 performance over its predecessor, NPU3 from the Meteor Lake generation.
The upgrade from NPU3 to NPU4 increased performance from 11.5 TOPS to 48 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), a statistic used to assess AI processing power. While Intel has not publicly published the performance of NPU5, industry experts estimate a big boost, potentially exceeding the 45 TOPS required by Microsoft's Copilot+ PC. The NPU5's expanded capabilities will enable more advanced AI processing directly on the CPU, improving activities like real-time language translation, enhanced generative AI models and AI-driven productivity applications.
According to Phoronix, Intel employees have confirmed that the 5th generation NPU would be included in Panther Lake CPUs, as indicated by recent patch notes released to the media. The NPU5 will be a huge step forward for Intel's AI goals, however the company has yet to provide official performance estimates or more information regarding the NPU's exact architecture.
As Panther Lake near its release date, desktop and laptop makers are expected to sell the expanded AI capabilities, similar to how MSI promoted its Vision X desktop. Nonetheless, while built-in NPUs are improving, they are still slower than high-end GPUs for complicated AI workloads, pressing upon the continued relevance of GPU integration for power users and AI-intensive applications.
