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 Last week, we shared a list of iPhone safety tools that every iPhone owner should know about, from Emergency SOS and Medical ID to Safety Check and Check In. MacRumors readers had more suggestions on safety information we should highlight, so we have a follow-up.
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The NPU is a computer component designed to accelerate AI tasks in a power-efficient manner, paving the way for new Windows desktop applications with powerful AI features. That's the plan, anyway.
All PCs will eventually have NPUs, but at the moment only some laptops have them. Here's everything you need to know about NPUs and why they're such a hot topic in the computer industry right now.
What is an NPU?
NPU stands for neural processing unit. It's a special kind of processor that's optimized for AI and machine learning tasks.
The name comes from the fact that AI models use neural networks. A neural network is, in layman's terms, a vast mesh of interconnected nodes that pass information between them. (The whole idea was modeled after the way our own human brains work.)
An NPU isn't a separate device that you buy and plug in (as you would with a GPU, for example). Instead, an NPU is "packaged" as part of a modern processor platform — like Intel's Core Ultra, AMD's Ryzen AI, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus. These platforms have a CPU along with an integrated GPU and NPU.
NPU vs. CPU vs. GPU: What's the difference? Explained
For many years now, computers have been running tasks on either the central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU.) That's still how it works on AI PCs (i.e., computers with NPUs).
The CPU runs most of the tasks on the
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Prolific leaker @momomo_us showed off two screenshots of Lenovo LOQ (the company's more budget gaming brand) and Legion 15-inch laptops sporting 13th-gen Intel processors paired with not-yet-announced RTX 5050 cards. The pages were up on UK-based seller Laptops Direct, but appear to be down as of now. As VideoCardz.com notes, they're packing 8GB of GDDR7 video memory, matching the laptop version of the RTX 5060 and boasting a 2GB upgrade over the mobile RTX 4050. We don't know any other specs at the moment, but presumably it'll be a step down from the 5060 in at least a few metrics.
Less encouraging is the price. The cheaper of the two laptops was priced at £1,149.97. At today's exchange rate, that would put its USD price at $1,531. Ouch, especially considering that RTX 5060 laptops are allegedly going to start at $1,100. The existence of more expensive models doesn't preclude the existence of cheaper ones… but yeah, I wouldn't hold out hope for getting a newer Nvidia card in a laptop that dips below the four-figure mark anytime s
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Amazon has deployed over 750,000 robots to its fulfillment centers over the last decade or so, but now there's a new, shall we say, more sensitive addition. The company has announced Vulcan, its first robot with a sense of touch. It's one in a series of new robots introduced today at Amazon's Delivering the Future event in Germany.
Vulcan uses force feedback sensors to monitor how much it's pushing or holding on to an object and, ideally, not damage it. "In the past, when industrial robots have unexpected contact, they either emergency stop or smash through that contact. They often don't even know they have hit something because they cannot sense it." Aaron Parness, Amazon director, applied science, stated in the release. "Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics. It's not just seeing the world, it's feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now."
Of course, there's an AI component, with Amazon training Vulcan's AI on physical data around touch and force. Vulcan also uses algorithms to determine what it can handle, identify different products and find space in the fulfillment center. The machine has "tackled thousands" of objects and tasks, like moving electronics and picking up socks. The system can also learn from its mistakes, with Amazon stating the robot will become more capable as time goes on.
Amazon, which has faced continual
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 NVIDIA's RTX 5060 finally has a release date. When the company announced the budget 50-series graphics cards last month, it gave the higher-end Ti model a firm April 19 launch but limited the base 5060 model to a vague "May" window. On Tuesday, we learned that the card with a $299 MSRP arrives on May 19.
The RTX 5060 has 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, 19 TFLOPS Blackwell shader cores, 5th-gen tensor cores with 614 AI TOPS performance and 4th-gen RT (ray tracing) cores that can reach 58 TFLOPS. It also has 3,840 CUDA Cores.
According to NVIDIA's benchmarks, the RTX 5060 reaches 234 fps in Hogwarts Legacy, 148 fps in Cyberpunk 2077, 220 fps in Avowed and 330 fps in Marvel Rivals. Those numbers are all set for 1080p with maxed-out graphics and 4x frame generation.
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