As Australia's technology landscape accelerates, AI hardware accelerators are specialised processors that handle AI workloads faster and more efficiently than general-purpose CPUs. The three main types—NPUs for on-device AI in laptops and PCs, TPUs for large-scale machine learning in the cloud, and GPUs for versatile AI development and graphics rendering—serve different users and needs. Hardware acceleration uses specialised processors because AI workloads require processing massive amounts of unstructured data like text and images, unlike CPUs which handle structured data. AI accelerators are optimised for application-specific workloads where the same mathematical operation must be performed trillions of times simultaneously. An NPU, or Neural Processing Unit, is a specialised microprocessor built into AI PCs, AI laptops, and mobile devices, enabling local AI workloads without cloud servers. With an NPU-equipped device, users can take full advantage of Windows 11 AI features and use Microsoft Copilot efficiently, including real-time transcription and voice commands, make AI-enhanced video calls with background blur and auto-framing, and work on images, videos, and text using on-device AI tools. Devices without an NPU must send workloads to remote servers, while NPU devices handle tasks locally via edge AI processing, delivering faster response times, better privacy, and the ability to use AI features without an internet connection. NPU performance is measured using the TOPS metric.