An NPU is a Neural Processing Unit. It is a specialized chip designed to run neural network inference efficiently, especially on edge devices like phones, drones, cameras, robots, and embedded systems. So instead of running a YOLO model on a power-hungry GPU, an edge device may run it on an NPU to save power and reduce latency.
For deep learning, an NPU is optimized for operations like:
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matrix multiplication
convolution
activation functions
quantized INT8/INT4 operations
