VPU, or Versatile Processing Unit, is a technology first used in Raptor Lake and fully deployed in Meteor Lake, Intel’s 14th generation of AI.
Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake will power AI thanks to VPU
Intel will soon unveil a new technology to boost AI performance in its CPUs known as VPU. This technology will be introduced with Raptor Lake and will be fully integrated into the 14th generation Core processor with Meteor Lake architecture.
What we know so far is that the VPU will perform various tasks related to artificial intelligence to speed up the process. These may be face recognition for various tasks in medicine, creation of 3D scenes and objects based on DL, scene understanding, etc.
This technology will initially be used in Raptor Lake processors for notebooks. However, it will be fully integrated in Meteor Lake, which is being developed with a completely redesigned tile-based architecture.
This means that the VPU will not be integrated in Raptor Lake desktop processors, but only in notebooks. It is not confirmed if it will be added to the desktop at some point in the future.
Artificial intelligence-related tasks are becoming increasingly important, which is why Intel is starting to develop technologies to accelerate them. AMD is also likely to earmark space for acceleration in its future processors.
Meteor Lake processors will hit the market in 2023 and will bring many architectural changes. The 13th generation Core processor is expected to be launched in 2022.