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I think other ARM SoC vendors like Rockchip added NPUs before Apple, or at least around the same time.

I was curious so looked it up. Apple's first chip with an NPU was the A11 bionic in Sept 2017. Rockchip's was the RK1808 in Sept 2019.

Face ID was the first tent pole feature that ran on the NPU.

Google TPU was introduced around same time as apple. Basically everybody knew it can be something around that time, just don't know exactly how

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit#Product... shows the first one is from 2015 (publicly announced in 2016). It also shows they have a TDP of 75+W.

I can’t find TDP for Apple’s Neural Engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Engine), but the first version shipped in the iPhone 8, which has a 7 Wh battery, so these are targeting different markets.

Even if it were true, they wouldn’t have the same influence as Apple has.

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