RPU vs Conventional CPU — FPGA Live Demonstration |15× Energy Efficiency | Reflexive Processing Unit
The video above shows a live hardware test on a Nexys A7 FPGA board. A single sensor feeds the same data stream into two parallel circuits running simultaneously. Both circuits drive a red LED, but they behave in fundamentally different ways.
The first LED represents the conventional system. It stays lit continuously throughout the recording, because the traditional threshold circuit is always active regardless of whether anything is happening. It burns energy while waiting for an event that may never come.
The second LED represents the RPU. At the start of the recording, it does not light up at all, because no meaningful data change is occurring. Only when real light reaches the sensor does this LED turn on — and it switches off the moment the light stops. Throughout the entire recording, there is only ambient conversation in the room, no actual light event. As you can see, the RPU circuit was effectively idle this entire time while the conventional circuit kept burning power. In the real world, systems spend most of their lives exactly like this — watching data that is going nowhere.
📊 Vivado Power Analyzer Results:
15× signal toggle reduction — measured on Nexys A7-100T FPGA
Same sensor input, same task, same hardware
RPU uses a fraction of the energy
This is the physical proof of the Von Neumann Stagnation Tax — processors burning energy to confirm nothing changed.
🔬 Silicon Validation:
TSMC 65nm: 625 MHz, 0 ps slack, 1.702 mW
SkyWater SKY130: 100 MHz, 0.014 mW leakage
RISC-V Ibex: 99.998% CPU cycle reduction
📄 Patent: PCT/IB2026/053070
🌐 rpu-micro.com
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