The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU is our custom-designed NPU. It is designed to inference AI workloads based on very long instruction word (VLIW) processor with specialized signal processing capabilities. It uses simultaneous multithreading (SMT) to take advantage of thread-level parallelism and hide latency. The Hexagon NPU includes scalar, vector, and tensor accelerators and a large-shared memory to move data between these accelerators and can provide massive per-clock throughput.

Yes, although it’s come a long way since the first Hexagon DSP was launched on the Snapdragon Platform in 2007. In 2020, we achieved a major milestone with a revolutionary architecture update for the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. We fused together the scalar, vector, and tensor accelerators for better performance and power efficiency. A large-shared memory was dedicated for the accelerators to share and move data efficiently. The fused AI accelerator architecture established a solid foundation for our NPU architecture moving forward.

The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU is unique through its system approach, custom design, and fast innovation. We fused together the scalar, vector, and tensor accelerators for better performance and power efficiency and on top of that, a large-shared memory cuts across these accelerators for them to share data at high speeds. The Hexagon NPU also implements micro-tile inferencing, a technique used to boost AI performance at ultra-low power. By running multiple micro tiles simultaneously, the scalar, vector, and tensor accelerators are all put to work at the same time, combining as many as 10 or more layers to eliminate almost all the intermediate memory reads and writes.

The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU helps to enhance it. Built specifically for AI, it trades off some ease of programmability for peak performance, power efficiency, and area efficiency to run the large number of multiplications, additions, and other operations required in machine learning. The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU’s micro tile inferencing technology delivers ultra-low power consumption and sets a new benchmark in AI processing speed and efficiency.

There are several platforms across categories that feature the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. These include Snapdragon X2 Series processors, Snapdragon X series processors, Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, and the upcoming Snapdragon Wear Elite—the world’s first Snapdragon wearable platform with an NPU.