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It nevertheless provides a quick reference to an NPU’s speed and how it compares to its competition.
Cale Hunt
What is TOPS?

Intel’s Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” processor
TOPS denotes how many trillions of operations a system can perform per second.
It’s one of the mostpowerful GPUson the market today, yet that number is still slightly baffling.
Even NVIDIA’s mobile GPUs can deliver up to 1,000 TOPS of power for AI workloads.

Dell’s XPS 14 (9440) is considered an AI PC.
With its Lunar Lake announcement, Intel introduced new terms to better denote performance.
That seems like a tall order, and only time will tell.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X and Copilot+
Microsoft and Qualcomm teamed up to introduceCopilot+on May 20, 2024.

Darren Crews speaks about Lunar Lake NPU 4 on stage for Intel
On Qualcomms side, May 20 was theunveiling of a plethora of Copilot+ laptopspowered bySnapdragon X EliteandSnapdragon X Pluschips.
Why is AI performance measured with TOPS?
TOPS certainly does not represent the whole picture when analyzing NPU performance.

AMD Ryzen AI 300 breakdown
Measuring a PC’s overall performance generally boils down to concrete benchmark numbers and abstract observations.
Testing an NPU is also something that needs to be worked out as we move forward.
Should you care about TOPS?

Satya Nadella at the Microsoft May 20 event
However, TOPS should not be considered the end-all measurement when it comes to NPU power.
Should you care about TOPS?

A tray of Intel’s Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” mobile CPUs.

Windows Copilot open on a laptop.

















