Intel Arrow Lake Refresh CPU Might Feature Upgraded NPU Leading To Larger Die Size
Intel might incorporate an upgraded NPU in its Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs for desktop & laptop platforms which will come at a cost.
Intel Could Add An Upgraded NPU In Its Arrow Lake Refresh Desktop & Laptop CPUs
Intel's upcoming high-end Arrow Lake CPUs such as the "S" Desktop and "HX" laptop lineup are going to launch without any dedicated NPU hardware onboard. The NPUs will be limited to Intel Arrow Lake-H/U and Lunar Lake chips with the Core Ultra 200V chips offering up to 48 TOPs that almost match the 50 AI TOPS offered by AMD's Strix APUs. These will come in the form of a new unit called NPU4 which we detailed here.
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Currently, AMD is the only chipmaker that offers a desktop chip with a dedicated NPU in the form of Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" chips for the AM5 platform but that might change soon. According to @jaykihn, who has been very active with Intel-related leaks, it looks like Intel is planning to incorporate a dedicated NPU within its own desktop and high-end laptop line of chips under the Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX platforms.
The information states that Intel could be preparing a refresh of its Arrow Lake CPUs which might incorporate an NPU within the SOC tile. The SOC tile is generally the largest tile featured on Intel's latest CPUs such as Meteor Lake chips. It is reported that with the added NPU, the Intel Arrow Lake CPUs could see a larger die size, expanding by 2.8mm compared to current-gen Arrow Lake chips.
This dedicated NPU will come in Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refresh CPUs from Intel & while the die size will be larger than the upcoming iteration of Arrow Lake chips, the package size will be the same. So the chips won't require any major socket changes (BGA and LGA). They will retain the compatibility but motherboard vendors will have to enable Fast Voltage Mode (FVM) on the VccSA rails. So it will be entirely up to
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