Friday, November 21st 2025
Dell Ship Pro Max 16 Plus Laptops with Qualcomm's Discrete NPU
If you're in the market for a new laptop and notice that the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus boasts more TOPS than usual, it's because Dell is equipping its latest models with a discrete Neural Processing Unit (NPU) from Qualcomm. The Dell Pro Max 16 Plus features a Qualcomm AI-100 Ultra NPU, delivering 870 INT8 TOPS within a 150 W TDP envelope, along with 128 GB of LPDDR5X memory. This provides enough computing power and memory capacity to run local AI models with up to 120 billion parameters on the NPU alone, without needing additional memory or computing resources.
Dell is outfitting these laptops with robust internals, including up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX vPro CPU with 24 cores. Notably, Dell has removed the discrete GPU to accommodate the NPU, which offers more computing power and VRAM capacity than a traditional GPU. For local AI development, the system utilizes this NPU for all necessary tasks, paired with a CPU and 64 GB of memory. For graphics output, the system relies on the integrated GPU within the "Arrow Lake-HX" chip, which handles basic graphics tasks but isn't suitable for gaming. This design choice is logical, as the dedicated NPU is intended for AI developers and occupies the space, power, and heat dissipation capacity that a GPU would typically use.
Dell is developing laptops with dedicated NPUs to meet the demands of modern workloads that require fast, local AI processing without relying on the cloud. Tasks such as analyzing medical scans, detecting fraud in financial data, modeling complex engineering problems, and handling sensitive research demand immediate results and strict data privacy. These tasks cannot afford network latency or the risk of sending confidential information off the device. They benefit from an AI processor capable of handling large models running continuously. By incorporating powerful NPUs, Dell aims to serve professionals who need real-time insights, predictable performance, and complete control over their data, all from a portable machine that integrates seamlessly into their daily workflow.
Sources:
Dell, Qualcomm
Dell is outfitting these laptops with robust internals, including up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX vPro CPU with 24 cores. Notably, Dell has removed the discrete GPU to accommodate the NPU, which offers more computing power and VRAM capacity than a traditional GPU. For local AI development, the system utilizes this NPU for all necessary tasks, paired with a CPU and 64 GB of memory. For graphics output, the system relies on the integrated GPU within the "Arrow Lake-HX" chip, which handles basic graphics tasks but isn't suitable for gaming. This design choice is logical, as the dedicated NPU is intended for AI developers and occupies the space, power, and heat dissipation capacity that a GPU would typically use.
21 Comments on Dell Ship Pro Max 16 Plus Laptops with Qualcomm's Discrete NPU
What I dont like is the lack of quality. Our security guy has gone through 4 (FOUR) motherboards in 6 months because of wifi chip failure tanking the shole system causing lockups. The chip is soldered and requires entire board replacement. Our boss really REALLY want sot abandon dell right now due to the terrible quality the last few years.
AMD and Nvidia actually have specialized chips for even higher-precision FP64 workloads for intense rendering, simulation, and other HPC work.
Cause we got a contract with them & we aint buyin anything else, so just sit down, STFU, and deal with it, hahahaha :D
Anyways, having used several of their business models over the past 5 years or so, as well as some HP's and Levoffvo's, I can say that, for the most part, quality-wise, they are ok and seem to work well for the office/productivity stuff.
But OTOH, I would not buy one for my personal use, as I already have a Clevo, and they are really better in almost every respect, but that's just IMHO....
You can go into a product lineup, and every AMD unit is missing; do a websearch for the AMD model in that lineup, and get linked back to a subpage, where you just were.
"Intel... Intel never changes." :laugh:
So please, don't claim to know or speak on behalf of "what people want". And don't get me started about conspiracy theories, when I know for a fact what goes on behind the curtains.
Here’s mine, Las Vegas:
And talking about HP, I even owned notebook from them, a couple of years back. It was the worst piece of overheating trash I ever owned. The magnesium chassis even discolored because of excessive heat. But it had Intel Inside®.
I understand you, being a newcomer to this site and also clearly ill-informed:
www.techpowerup.com/94123/eu-fines-intel-a-record-eur1-06-billion-in-antitrust-case
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp.
Have a glass of water and a read, before talking bs.
Bye.
and dell has more ryzen systems these days and I might consider getting one of the pro models that do have it.
So there is no reason for this not to work except for Alienware (Dell) making life difficult for AMD owners.
On the actual topic, I saw a benchmark for the Nvidia Sparx that was 250 INT8. So this will do nearly 4 time more than that? I would hope the 250 number was a joke considering what these things cost.
This NPU is pure tensor cores. The DGX Spark also comes with CUDA, general compute abilities, and more TOPS if you use FP4 compute instead of INT8.