In the age of AI's rise, the importance of NPU (Neural Processing Unit) seems to be getting higher and higher. Last year, AI PCs also relied on NPU voice to rise all the way.

But as of now, at least on the PC side, NPU applications are still quite small. Even if there are, they are almost all applications of chicken ribs, such as online camera optimization or low-resolution literary images, so for most users, NPU is a processing unit that exists in the computer but always has 0 usage.

However, AMD did something ridiculous at this time: plugging the NPU into the Z2 Extreme, the processor of the Z2 Extreme, and becoming the new member of the Z2 family, the Z2 AI Extreme. Since NPU applications have been put into PCs that work for work purposes, isn’t it more difficult to put on a palm that uses electric competition as its main concern?

Let the palms have a smooth game experience

The first handheld machine equipped with a built-in NPU handheld processor - XBOX Ally gave the answer - that is, the built-in NPU supports Auto SR (Automatic Super Resolution) in the game. The concept of Auto SR is actually similar to DLSS or XeSS that is popular in the game industry today. It allows the GPU to render a game screen with a lower resolution, and then use AI to increase the resolution to achieve the dual purpose of high gameplay and high picture quality.

The role of NPU in Auto SR is actually the Tensor Core in NVIDIA GPU or the XMX unit in Arc GPU, which is responsible for assisting AI to improve game resolution. Compared with DLSS or XeSS, the biggest advantage of Auto SR is that it does not require additional game support. Microscope says that as long as the system has built-in NPU and has a computing power of more than 40 TOPS (Copilot+ PC), it can be supported with Windows 11 24H2 or above. In this way, even systems like handhelds with limited native graphics capabilities can provide smooth game experience.

Who will have a handheld market?

In fact, Auto SR is not a new thing. It was mentioned as early as last year when WeChat launched Copilot+ PC. It was only supported by Snapdragon X series processors at that time, but the game performance of the ARM architecture processor was too poor, so it was rarely mentioned. However, now XBOX has cooperated with Huaxi to launch its own handheld machine and choose the Z2 Extreme processor as the main source of computing power. It seems that it is not supported by its own Auto SR. In addition, the relationship between Micro and AMD has always been good, so AMD puts the NPU back to Z2 Extreme becomes Z2 AI Extreme.

So will there be a palm-machine market after Z2 AI Extreme? It doesn't seem to be certain that the MSI Claw A8, which is already on sale, and the recently released joint Legion Go 2, still use the Z2 Extreme. And even if the Z2 Extreme does not support Auto SR, it still supports AMD's own FSR or Intel's XeSS (DP4a fullback mode), and players are more familiar with it. But at least NPUs have relatively practical applications for PCs, especially PCs without independent GPUs. I also hope that everyone's long microscope will launch similar functions, so that the NPU on the PC is no longer just a chicken rib.

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