NPUs for developers: what you can actually do today

Neural processing units have stopped being a marketing label on Snapdragon, Apple Silicon and AMD Ryzen AI laptops. Here is what you can actually do from code today, which tools are mature, and when it pays off to target the NPU instead of the CPU or GPU.

December 5, 2025 4 min 261 4.4

Technology

Snapdragon X Elite: ARM Arrives at Productivity PCs

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is the first ARM chip to match Apple M3 performance in Windows laptops, with 22+ hours of battery life and a 45 TOPS NPU for on-device AI. Most software runs well via the Prism emulator, though it is not yet ready for anti-cheat gaming or specialized x86 workloads.

August 21, 2024 5 min 672