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Chip industry titans descended on Taiwan this week to announce an “AI PC revolution” that guarantees the most important advance in many years in the best way consumers and office employees interact with their personal devices.
At the annual Computex conference, the CEOs of Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Arm gathered on an unprecedented scale, delivering speeches accompanied by eye-catching AI videos and publicity stunts, proving that their technology behind the chips for AI-enabled PCs – a lot of that are made in Taiwan – is probably the most powerful and efficient.
Computex was “the perfect opportunity for each chipmaker to inform its own AI PC story,” said Ian Cutress, chip analyst at consulting firm More Than Moore, ahead of industry experts predicting a surge in demand for AI PCs in the approaching months.
These notebooks and desktop computers have special silicon chips embedded inside them that may run AI applications reminiscent of digital assistants and software that may generate the whole lot from code to videos on the device itself, somewhat than counting on cloud services.
“When I feel in regards to the PC market, that is probably the most exciting moment within the 25 years because the introduction of WiFi,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in a speech that also featured a chatbot saying its products were more price competitive than rivals. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon went even further, saying the PC industry is experiencing a renaissance, with the AI PC being an important development since Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system.
Microsoft set the race for AI PCs in motion when it unveiled a line of AI-enabled PCs in May. The devices, which launch this month, will include Copilot, Microsoft's leading AI assistant, and have a brand new “Recall” tool that may quickly recall what users have been taking a look at on their devices by saving snapshots of their screens at regular intervals.
The company selected Qualcomm as its first AI chip supplier, despite the fact that its Arm-based processors account for under a small share of PC sales in a Windows market traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD and their competing x86 architecture.
Analysts say Microsoft is attempting to encourage competition. Cutress said Qualcomm is “more willing to be flexible with Microsoft's technical requirements” with a purpose to gain a foothold within the PC sector and differentiate itself from its traditional smartphone sector.
Qualcomm's Amon called the collaboration a “historic” moment, combining its chip with Microsoft's software to usher in “a brand new era for the PC.” He said the corporate had “never gotten recognition as a pc company.”
But Intel and AMD usually are not removed from putting their AI chips in PCs. AMD unveiled two latest processors for AI PCs at Computex that may begin shipping in volumes late next month. Intel expects its Lunar Lake processor, a flagship chip for AI PCs, to ship within the third quarter, in time for the vacation shopping season. It can be utilized in 80 AI PCs from 20 manufacturers, the corporate added.
“Given their (Intel and AMD) decades-long close relationships with PC manufacturers, I believe they might be best adapted to the AI PC market,” said Rakesh Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The rush to unveil products for the “AI revolution” in Taipei seemed designed to get ahead of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in Silicon Valley and is anticipated to showcase a spread of AI features for products based on chips it makes itself.
The frenzied activity comes just because the PC market is recovering, with shipments rising 3.2 percent year-on-year in the primary quarter, in line with research firm Canalys. There were two years of weak sales following a boom brought on by the shift to distant work throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morgan Stanley analysts said AI PCs can be a key contributor to the subsequent phase of PC market growth as penetration increases from two percent in 2024 to 65 percent in 2028 and corporations select PCs running AI applications because it is a less expensive, safer and versatile option than the cloud.
Kumar said the PC market must also “watch Nvidia,” despite the fact that the corporate's principal focus immediately is to cement its leadership in AI processors for data centers. Nvidia started off as a chipmaker for gaming PCs, however the AI boom has led to 87 percent of its $26 billion revenue in the primary quarter of this 12 months coming from data center products.
Kumar said Nvidia can “leverage its GPU (graphics processing unit) advantage” to “be competitive within the AI PC market.” Microsoft has already announced plans to make use of its GPUs in future AI PCs.
Smaller hardware manufacturers are also entering the brand new market: dozens of consumer electronics manufacturers from Taiwan and China are using Computex to present accessories which have been modified to integrate AI software. These include keyboards and headsets with special copilot buttons for calling up the appliance.
Despite efforts to enhance AI technology, analysts doubt that consumer demand can be large enough to justify the upper prices for more powerful hardware.
“What drives people to upgrade their devices is increased productivity,” Cutress said. “Do these devices allow them to work faster? We're at the purpose where the hardware is there. But we still must see if there's software that may answer that query.”
