55%
Plausible
The NPU6 will be significantly superior to the current NPU4 found on the Lunar Lake and will offer a better generational uplift compared to NPU5.
Intel's Nova Lake Desktop Processors to Boast a Solid 1.5X Boost in AI Performance Through NPU6
Prominent leaker @jaykihn0 today posted on X, claiming that the next-gen Intel Nova Lake will boast a much superior NPU compared to the current-gen Lunar Lake series, as well as the upcoming Panther Lake. As you may recall, we recently reported on the new generation NPU being prepared for Nova Lake. Intel apparently doesn't want to stay at the same NPU as the Panther Lake since it hardly improves the AI performance over Lunar Lake.
Lunar Lake uses NPU4, bringing 48 AI TOPS of performance, while Intel Panther Lake will boast 50 AI TOPS. This isn't significant by any means and is quite a lackluster generational improvement when compared to the transition from Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake to Lunar Lake, which boast 11.5 TOPS and 13 TOPS, respectively.
Intel Panther Lake will transition to NPU5 while Nova Lake will utilize NPU6, a 6th-gen NPU (Neural Processing Unit), which was seen in a Linux Kernel patch. According to the leaker, NPU6 is able to deliver a good 74 AI TOPS of INT8 performance, which is a solid 1.5X uplift over NPU4 and over 5X the NPU3 used in Arrow Lake. It's expected that this AI capability will be carried to the mobile lineup as well, but take this info with a grain of salt as we haven't heard any official announcement regarding this.
Nova Lake appears to bring something new to the table, including better NPU, two graphics architectures, and AVX10 support. Hopefully, Nova Lake doesn't disappoint in IPC generational uplifts, as it really needs to tackle a strong competition since AMD will be back with its Zen 6 lineup, which is not just expected to bring good IPC uplifts, but also much superior AI capabilities than the Zen 5-based chips.
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