But productivity doesn’t seem to be growing
Perhaps future video cards, following the example of the latest processors, will have their own NPU units. At least PowerColor showed that it makes sense.
At Computex 2024, the manufacturer showed a system based on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and some external NPU. Apparently, we are talking about a separate chip, and not a block in the processor, and in the future such a chip can either be placed on a video card or integrated directly into the GPU.
Performance, apparently, does not increase in this mode, but power consumption is very noticeably reduced. In two test games that PowerColor used, the video card consumed 339 or 263 W, and the NPU reduced these figures to 263 and 205 W, respectively, that is, by 22%.
PowerColor says the technology works by adding a custom GUI as an intermediary that connects the GPU to the NPU. The NPU then removes the load from the video card's power subsystem, as well as from the MOSFET transistors, which leads to energy savings and lower temperatures.
PowerColor also stated that since AMD will not be ready to launch new graphics cards this year (we already heard about this yesterday), the company may release a version of its Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card with this technology. But the manufacturer does not make exact promises.