One embodiment provides for a graphics processor comprising a block of graphics compute units, a graphics processor pipeline coupled to the block of graphics compute units, and a programmable neural network unit including one or more neural network hardware blocks. The programmable neural network unit is coupled with the block of graphics compute units and the graphics processor pipeline. The one or more neural network hardware blocks include hardware to perform neural network operations and activation operations for a layer of a neural network. The programmable neural network unit can configure settings of one or more hardware blocks within the graphics processor pipeline based on a machine learning model trained to optimize performance of a set of workloads.