Samsung readies Gaia AI accelerator for PCs — HP and Lenovo are reportedly validating the NPU
Samsung is reportedly sampling its dedicated AI processor for next-generation AI PCs with leading PC makers, such as HP and Lenovo. The chip, codenamed Gaia, was developed by the company's System LSI business unit, and it is designed to offload AI-related workloads from the CPU and GPU, reports Chosun.
Samsung's Gaia is designed to accelerate generative AI workloads on PCs and is made using the company's 4nm-class fabrication process. The chip, which is essentially a neural processing unit (NPU), is currently being evaluated by HP in the U.S. and Lenovo in China to verify its performance and evaluate whether it makes sense to integrate Gaia into their systems due in late 2027 or early 2028.
The report does not detail how Gaia differs from NPUs that are integrated into AMD's Ryzen, Intel's Core, or Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors as well as whether it can offer significant performance advantages. Meanwhile, the report implies that the NPU (or perhaps its derivatives based on the same architecture) could be used for Samsung's next-generation implementations of its processing-in-memory (PIM) technology.
Samsung's original PIM was designed to embed compute logic directly within the HBM memory array and reduce data movement between HBM memory modules and host processors. PIM was aimed to accelerate select workloads, but did not take off because AI and HPC GPUs became very efficient and were supported by mature ecosystems, unlike PIM.
Perhaps if Samsung's upcoming Gaia NPU gains support from hardware makers and ecosystem partners, then this will give a boost to Samsung's next-generation PIM implementation as well. However, standalone NPUs and PIM are so fundamentally different that we can barely imagine that they can share a common architecture. Yet, PIM logic can be a subset of an NPU in terms of supported instructions and data formats and they can certainly share a common software framework.
One of the interesting things to note about Gaia is that it was reportedly developed by Samsung's LSI division, the same business unit at the company that is responsible for Exynos processors, automotive solutions, connectivity chips, ISPs, DSPs, display drivers, and image sensors. Given the multi-faceted nature of Samsung's LSI unit, as well as its strategic importance for the company, Samsung must be pinning some hopes on Gaia.
We have contacted Samsung and asked for a comment about the report, but we yet have to hear back from the company.