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by oarth 769 days ago
> A GPU does other things.

Yes, and so does the M4.

> It just happens to be it’s good at neural stuff too.

No, it's no coincidence. Nvidia has been focusing on neural nets, same as Apple.

> There’s another difference too. Apple’s NPU is integrated in their chip.

The neural processing capabilities of Nvidia products(Tensor Cores) are also integrated in the chip.

> A 4090 is not integrated into a CPU.

Correct, but nobody ever stated that. Apple stated that M4 was faster than any AI PC today, not that it's the fastest NPU integrated into a CPU. And by the way, the M4 is also a GPU.

> I don’t know if the official definition draws a distinction that would exclude GPUs or not.

A NPU can be a part of a GPU, a CPU or it's own chip.

> If they had said it was the fastest way to run neural networks I would have questioned it,

They said fastest NPU, neural processing unit. It's the term Apple and a few others use for their AI accelerator. The whole point of a AI accelerator is performance and efficiency. If something does a better job at it then it's a better AI accelerator.