PowerColor (via harukaze5719) is developing a new technology called “Edge AI” that will enable AMD Radeon RX graphics cards to use their NPUs (Neural Processing Units) to reduce power consumption.
In the vendor demonstration, Cyberpunk 2077The power consumption dropped from 263.2W to 205.3W, a 22% power saving, which is noticeably better than AMD’s power saving mode, which was 18.5%. Final Fantasy XV was also available, and the power savings results agreed within 1 percent.
PowerColor explains that its Edge AI technology works through communication between the graphics card and PowerColor’s proprietary GUI, which work together to bridge the gap with the NPU. According to IT Media, the Computex test bench had the NPU on and externally connected to the GPU, leaving open the question of whether similar NPU power savings can be achieved via an NPU on a CPU such as the Ryzen 8000 series. PowerColor also claimed in its press materials that Edge AI On provides a slight performance boost. At the same time, tech reviewers in the field observed a 10% drop in FPS between the more efficient NPU test computer and a standard GPU.
PowerColor has integrated its NPU into its Radeon GPU (still in development). The company claims that AI has reduced power consumption by 22%. This is a bigger saving than AMD’s power saving features. pic.twitter.com/9I8iEikotDJune 7, 2024
NPUs are here to stay. Their potential to help improve gaming performance would be a big win for the technology on the desktop. NPUs have been standard on high-end laptops since 2023, when Intel Core Ultra or Meteor Lake are first released. NPUs are ideal for mobile applications. AI calculations are very processor-intensive, so built-in AI accelerators are well suited for laptops, where high efficiency is required to save battery life. The desktop market has less need for NPUs, but they usually have dedicated graphics cards, which can perform AI calculations at higher power than NPUs, but with lower efficiency.
AMD first introduced NPU to desktops with the Ryzen 8000G series, but there are no plans to bring it back with the recently announced Ryzen 9000 series. Depending on the progress of PowerColor’s ongoing research into Edge AI, we may see the release of PowerColor AMD graphics cards with built-in NPUs this year. Or we may see the return of desktop CPU NPUs that can be leveraged for gaming efficiency in a similar way. It’s unclear when and where Edge AI will appear in PowerColor or AMD’s stable of products.
