Intel's next-generation "Nova Lake" desktop processors will feature 6th generation Neural Processing Unit (NPU) design, which is an entire generation ahead of the 5th generation NPU Intel introduced with "Panther Lake." As the latest Linux patch from Intel's engineers confirms, Nova Lake will already feature an upgraded NPU, making the 5th generation NPU in Panther Lake lasting only a single generation.

The patch states: "Add support for NPU6 generation that will be present on Nova Lake CPUs. As with previous generations, it maintains compatibility so no bigger functional changes." As a reminder, the 5th generation NPU in Panther Lake boosts up to 50 TOPS, making it compatible for Copilot+ AI PCs. So we can expect the NPU in Nova Lake to get a bigger TOPS budget, with the same software compatibility. This is great news for software that introduced NPU acceleration in the previous generations, as the additional performance increases will go smoothly.

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