166
My new laptop chip has an 'AI' processor in it, and it's a complete waste of space
(www.pcgamer.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Technology
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No, it will not save any power at all. The power is only consumed during switching, so when some module is properly clock gated, it will not consume any power. There are many parts of the chip that are dark, for example the full CPU core could be disabled for various reasons and it does not affect power consumption when it's dark. Maybe you know the Steam Deck, it is a battery operated device with the best power efficiency in its class. But what people don't know is that it has more than 20% of its chip area disabled, as it relates to stereoscopic displays, because the same exact chip is also used by some AR or VR goggles, I forgot the name.
Also in general the modern chips are more limited by thermal rather than space. So realistically, even if you remove the NPU, you won't be able to place anything high power there anyways, maybe you can put a couple hundred K of sram for cache in its place, but it won't matter much in the end.