Microsoft seems to be gearing up for an update to Windows Task Manager. In keeping with the times, the observation tool will provide optional NPU and NPU Engine columns in the Processes page.
That change to the Task Manager is currently a part of Windows 11 Insider Experimental (Future Platforms) Preview build, version 29576.1000. Below are the details Microsoft posted on its official blog:
- We’re updating Task Manager to provide better insight into NPU usage for PCs that include an NPU. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are now available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages. The Details page also adds NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns to give you deeper visibility into how workloads are using NPU resources. Additionally, if there are neural engines that are part of a GPU, they will now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI‑related system activity.
- We’re also adding a new optional Isolation column to the Processes and Details pages, allowing you to see which apps are running in an AppContainer.
“Once these changes are available to you, you can add any of the new columns by right‑clicking a column header in Task Manager and selecting them from the menu.”
In addition to the update, Microsoft will also be expanding the Performance page to display a GPU’s neural engines, should said GPU actually have any of them. Again, this is in keeping with the current market of AI-powered PCs, where AI workloads run on CPU-integrated NPUs, a GPU block, or other variations of AI-accelerated hardware.
As a gentle reminder, these updates are still only part of the Windows Insiders program. As such, the new NPU columns, among other feature updates, are still experimental and may be unstable. “The builds we release to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows. Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.”
(Source: Microsoft, Videocardz)
