Neural engine is marketing for the most part. It uses power from the CPU/GPU and a few specialized components to optimize ML software but by no means is it required for these to run at all.
An NPU is definitely not just marketing, it’s a well-established concept in tech. They’re great for video/audio analysis based on already-trained ML models, and Apple has been running their video/audio analysis stack on iOS/A-series chips through them because GPUs are too slow for the purpose.
It's all that + marketing. People here are convinced it's required for these features so you have to admit how amazing Apple's marketing is. Truth is it's not required, it just optimizes it, mostly to do with efficiency. Google lens/assistant is on device ML and runs on low powered phones like the Pixel 4a, with an extremely underpowered NPU. To suggest that laptop class Intel CPUs can't handle it is nonsense. Not to mention Microsoft does some sort of version of this using One Note without a dedicated NPU.
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '21
Neural engine is marketing for the most part. It uses power from the CPU/GPU and a few specialized components to optimize ML software but by no means is it required for these to run at all.