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generalizationslast Thursday at 11:04 PM3 repliesview on HN

NPUs were pushed by Microsoft, who saw the writing on the wall: AI like chatgpt will dominate the user's experience, edge computing is a huge advantage in that regard, and Apple's hardware can do it. NPUs are basically Microsoft trying to fudge their way to a llamacpp-on-Apple-Silicon experience. Obviously it failed, but they couldn't not try.


Replies

aleph_minus_oneyesterday at 1:33 AM

> NPUs were pushed by Microsoft, who saw the writing on the wall: AI like chatgpt will dominate the user's experience, edge computing is a huge advantage in that regard

Then where is a demo application from Microsoft of a model that I can run locally where my user experience is so much better (faster?) if my computer has an NPU?

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imtringuedyesterday at 11:23 AM

I think the reason why NPUs failed is that Microsoft's preferred standard ONNX and the runtime they developed is a dud. Exporting models to work on ONNX is a pain in the ass.

alfiedotwtfyesterday at 12:51 AM

> AI like chatgpt will dominate the user's experience

I hope not. Sure they’re helpful, but I’d rather they sit idle behind the scenes, and then only get used when a specific need arises rather than something like a Holodeck audio interface