An NPU, or Neural Processing Unit, is a specialized chip designed to perform information processing operations based on neural models or artificial neural networks. These chips are optimized for accelerating tasks related to machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and other tasks associated with artificial intelligence.
Unlike traditional processors that execute sequential instructions, NPUs are specifically designed to simultaneously handle large amounts of data and perform massively parallel calculations, making them particularly effective for tasks related to deep learning and deep neural networks.
NPUs are widely used in applications such as speech recognition, image classification, machine translation, object detection, sequence prediction and many other fields where massive and complex data processing is required. They help speed up these tasks and improve the performance of artificial intelligence systems, both in terms of processing speed and energy efficiency.