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172 points marban | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.251s | source
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Aissen ◴[] No.40052746[source]
A quick search into it shows that this Ryzen AI NPU's support isn't integrated into upstream inference frameworks yet — so right now it's just useless silicon surface you pay for :-/
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Rinzler89 ◴[] No.40052844[source]
Some AMD laptops haven't even yet enabled the NPU in firmware even on the 7000 series wich are about a year old. Meaning it's still useless.

I was kinda bummed out they released the 8000 series after I just bought a laptop with 7000 series, but I think I actually dodged a bullet here since it doesn't look like much of an upgrade and the AI silicone screams of very early first gen product to me, as if they rushed it out the door because everyone else was doing "AI" and they needed to also cash in on the hype, kinda like the first gen RTX cards.

I think by the time I'll actually upgrade, the AI/NPU tech would have matured considerably and actually be useful.

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robocat ◴[] No.40055719[source]
Does anyone have any mental heuristics for judging how "useless" a feature is?

Over decades I have a growing antipathy towards products with too many features. Especially new versions/models where the vaunted features of the previous version/model seem to never have been used by anyone.

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Rinzler89 ◴[] No.40056186[source]
>Does anyone have any mental heuristics for judging how "useless" a feature is?

My favorite example is the story I got to live through of the first generations of consumer 64 bit CPUs.

When the first AMD Athlon 64 came out, everyone I knew was buying them because they though they were getting something totally future proof by jumping early on the 64 bit bandwagon, in 2003, when nobody yet had 4GB+ of RAM and neither Windows nor any software would see 64bit releases till several years later when Vista came out which everyone avoided and staid on Windows XP 32bit waiting for Windows 7.

And by the time RAM sizes over 4GB and 64 bit software became even remotely mainstream, we already had dual- and quad-core CPUs miles ahead of those original 64 bit CPUs which were now obsolete (tech progress back then was wild).

So just like how 64bit silicone was a useless feature on consumer CPUs, and like the first GPUs with raytracing, I feel like now we're in the same boat with AI silicone in PCs, no much SW support for them and when it does come, these early chips will be obsolete. It's the price of being an early adopter.

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1. nercury ◴[] No.40061793[source]
If AMD did not come up with 64-bit extension, we would be saying goodbye to x86 architecture.