Microsoft’s Copilot AI service Intel said that it will work natively on computers Tom’s device. The company also said that next-generation AI PCs will require built-in neural processing units (NPUs) capable of 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second), beyond the capabilities of any consumer processor on the market.
Intel says AI computers can run “more elements of Copilot” natively. Currently, Copilot handles almost everything in the cloud, even small requests. This creates quite a bit of latency, which is fine for larger jobs, but not ideal for smaller jobs. Adding local computing capacity would reduce this latency while potentially improving performance and privacy.
Microsoft used to be rumor requiring 40 TOPS (along with a modest 16GB of RAM) on next-generation AI computers. Currently, Windows Surface Studio doesn’t make much use of NPUs, other than running video effects like background blur for webcams. ChromeOS and macOS both use NPU power for more video and audio processing features, but OCR, translation, live transcription, and more. Ars Technica noted.
The processor with the fastest NPU speed so far is the Apple M3 (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Ultra), which offers 18 TOPS across the line. AMD’s Ryzen 8040 and 7040 laptop chips clock in at 16 and 10 TOPS, respectively, while Intel’s Meteor Lake laptop reaches 10 TOPS. Qualcomm may offer the first processor with enough power for Copilot Snapdragon X Elite45 TOPS will offer AI computing speed.
Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, scheduled to arrive in 2025, will triple current NPU speeds. Yesterday, the company unveiled 300 new AI features optimized specifically for its OpenVino platform. So does the chip giant announced an AI PC development kit based on the ASUS NUC Pro that uses the current Meteor Lake silicon.
“From a desktop perspective, we have plans for what we can say on the desktop side [is an] AI PC. And then there are the next generation AI PC, 40 TOPS requirements; we have all different steps in our roadmap on how we cover all the different segments,” the company said Tom’s device.
This article contains affiliate links; we may earn a commission if you click on such a link and make a purchase.
