Intel Nova Lake Steps Into the NPU Spotlight, Leaving AMD’s Ryzen in the Shadows

Future fully new Intel Nova Lake desktop processors are finally getting a sufficiently powerful dedicated NPU block. A new category of computers, Copilot+ PC, was formed a year and a half ago with the release of laptops on Snapdragon X platforms. For a PC to belong to this category and support various AI functions, it must be based on a processor with an NPU of at least 40 TOPS. In the mobile segment, such processors already exist, but not in the desktop segment until now. And Nova Lake will be the first at least for Intel.

Moreover, it will receive a quite powerful block by modern standards. This will be the NPU6 with a performance of 74 TOPS. For comparison, even the latest Panther Lake, which has not been released yet, will have the NPU5 with 50 TOPS, while the current mobile Arrow Lake is satisfied with just 13 TOPS. Whether there will be a dedicated block in the upcoming Ryzen desktops is still unknown. In fact, there is noticeably less information about these new Ryzens compared to Nova Lake.

Industry experts note that Intel’s significant leap in NPU performance with Nova Lake could potentially set a new benchmark in desktop processing power. Consumers have expressed growing interest in the AI capabilities of processors, especially as AI-related applications become more mainstream. Sources within the tech industry speculate that AMD may need to accelerate its NPU innovations to keep pace with Intel’s advancements.

Recent market trends suggest a shift towards integrating high-performance NPU capabilities in desktop processors as artificial intelligence and machine learning become integral in personal computing. Experts anticipate that both Intel and AMD will push harder to cater to this emerging demand, although Intel currently seems to have a temporary edge with Nova Lake.