News Lenovo showcases a USB-C connected AI Stick with a 32 TOPS NPU on board

[Admin]

Lenovo unveiled the Lenovo AI Stick at MWC 2025. It features an NPU with 32 TOPS.

Lenovo showcases a USB-C connected AI Stick with a 32 TOPS NPU on board : Read more

 

[AngelusF]

So Thunderbolt over USB-C can provide up to 100W, and that's not enough??? I'm assuming that grille on the end of the thing is an exhaust port for a tiny fan, but that's still a heck of a lot of power to be putting into a small enclosure.

 

[bit_user]

IMO, whether or not this is very interesting has a lot to do with how much DRAM it has.

The shape does somewhat suggest that perhaps the compute is provided by a M.2 form factor board?

So Thunderbolt over USB-C can provide up to 100W, and that's not enough???

Not every host will be able to provide that much, however.

I'm assuming that grille on the end of the thing is an exhaust port for a tiny fan, but that's still a heck of a lot of power to be putting into a small enclosure.

Yeah, perhaps we could infer how much power it burns from the size of the grille. Even if the case is metal, they'd have to be careful not to let it get so hot that people could burn themselves on it.

Actually, the amount of TOPS it provides isn't crazy either for its size or a sane amount of power, if you consider what I've found some modern phones seem to offer:

"the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, has a more powerful NPU at 70 TOPS, compared to the 45 TOPS in the Google Pixel 9 Pro's Tensor G4 chipset."

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1f2vh3q/g4_tops_performance_lower_than_sdg3/
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However, providing 32 TOPS in a reasonable power envelope would presume that whatever chip it contains is quite modern. I wonder what!

 

[Notton]

It looks approximately the same size as an external M.2 drive.
They use a max of 10W and that's already pushing the thermal limits of the better designs.

I doubt this AI stick uses more than 15W, and that's only if it features an internal fan to push air through the grills.

 

[AngelusF]

Not every host will be able to provide that much, however.

Which is why I said "up to 100W"

But the Lenovo blurb implies that you'll need to provide it with more power to get full performance without any mention of whether or not it's already getting 100W from the host. Could be just poor copywriting, though.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

So instead of an eGPU we now have an eNPU.

Given it's a paltry 32TOPS which is sort of like what you get from a really weak iGPU what's the point. If it were 100TOPS+ sure as long as software like Topaz AI can leverage it.

 

[bit_user]

So instead of an eGPU we now have an eNPU.

Given it's a paltry 32TOPS which is sort of like what you get from a really weak iGPU what's the point.

No, "really weak" iGPUs aren't 32 TOPS, or else much older laptops would qualify as MS Copilot+ compatible than the ones just released last year with second gen NPUs.