Microsoft draws a "passing line" for computing power, what is there to see in Wi

Microsoft Dives into the AI PC Race: Is It to "Set an Example" for Allies or Truly to Compete with Apple?

01

Microsoft AI PC Unveils Its Full Potential

On the eve of this year's annual developer conference, Microsoft held a product launch event at its Redmond campus in Washington.

Microsoft announced the launch of a brand-new personal computer (PC) with an integrated Copilot feature, capable of handling more artificial intelligence tasks without the need for cloud data centers. The company's CEO, Satya Nadella, dubbed it "Copilot+" and will collaborate with a range of suppliers including Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD, and partner with manufacturers such as Acer and Asus for sales.

At the launch event, Microsoft showcased a feature of the new PC called "recall," which will assist users in locating files and other data on their computers. For users of the game "Minecraft," the Copilot voice assistant serves as a real-time virtual coach.

Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's head of consumer marketing, stated that the new computer is equipped with a chip that features a new neural processing unit (NPU), capable of performing over 40 trillion operations per second, or 40+ TOPS, and offers long-lasting battery life. The first batch of Copilot+ PCs will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, which can accelerate artificial intelligence programs like Copilot.

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Mehdi predicts that global sales of AI PCs will reach 50 million units next year. He stated at the launch that the faster operation of artificial intelligence assistants directly on the computer will be the "most compelling reason" to upgrade one's PC for a considerable period.The company's CEO, Satya Nadella, believes that the next generation of personal computers (PCs) equipped with specific artificial intelligence (AI) chips that offer greater performance will reignite the long-standing competition between Windows PCs and Apple Macs.

Nadella stated: "Apple has performed exceptionally well in many aspects, and we are now looking forward to a true showdown between Windows and Mac."

02

Microsoft collaborates with Qualcomm to make waves

Last week, OpenAI's newly launched technology, GPT-4o, will soon be provided to users as part of Microsoft's Copilot. Through collaboration with OpenAI, Microsoft aims to expand its early advantage in the competition for paid AI tools, with its rivalry with Google's parent company, Alphabet, becoming increasingly intense.

At the same time, Microsoft also introduced a new Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop, featuring Qualcomm chips based on the architecture of Arm Holdings. The company also launched a technology called Prism, which will help software written for Intel and AMD chips to run on chips manufactured using Arm technology.

These PCs, along with others, use Arm-based Qualcomm chips to provide longer battery life, while PCs equipped with AMD and Intel chips will also hit the market; the new feature Recall helps to find content viewed on the PC, offering real-time subtitles with translations in Chinese and over 40 other languages; the all-new Copilot+Surface Pro starts at $999, and starts at 8688 yuan domestically.In fact, with the advantage of a large camp, computer manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, and Samsung are also launching AI-ready computers equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors. These processors promise longer battery life and will run Microsoft's Copilot AI chatbot.

Microsoft announced at a press conference held at its campus in Redmond, Washington, that device manufacturers will later launch computers with AMD and Intel chips that follow the Copilot+ standard. These computers will be able to translate audio, recommend replies to received messages, suggest changes in the "Settings" app, and even discuss the content on the screen with people.

Another major feature highlight of Windows 11 AIPC is real-time subtitles with real-time translation capabilities. This feature can automatically translate live or recorded audio from any app or video platform into English subtitles in real-time, supporting translation into more than 40 languages, including Chinese. It converts the audio transmitted by the PC into unified English subtitles and displays them in real-time on the app window, even when the user is offline.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, stated that Microsoft has elevated Copilot to a new level, where Copilot will hear, see, and provide help in real-time.

03

Microsoft Sets the "Passing Line" for AI Computing Power

Subsequently, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Consumer Categories, said, "These new PCs are ultra-thin, ultra-light, and ultra-aesthetic. They are the most powerful Windows PCs ever," and they will also include "groundbreaking AI experiences." Windows 11 AI PCs will be available starting from June 18th, with Microsoft Surface and OEM partners such as Dell, Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo launching Windows 11 AI PCs successively.Mehdi stated that the Windows 11 AI PC is a faster and smarter Windows PC. It is equipped with a chip that features a brand-new Neural Processing Unit (NPU), capable of performing over 40 trillion, or 40+ TOPS, operations per second, and offers long-lasting battery life.

The Windows 11 AIPC integrates AI experiences into some popular Apps. For instance, Adobe's flagship Apps are set to debut on Windows 11 AI PCs, including Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express, which were launched on Monday, with Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and more Apps to be released this summer. In LiquidText, leveraging the NPU-driven local AI capabilities, documents can be annotated faster and smarter, ensuring data privacy.

The new Windows Copilot Runtime includes over 40 AI models, supporting features like Recall.

From this perspective, Microsoft's new AI PC clearly sets the "pass mark" for AI computing power.

Each laptop may need to run more than 40 large models, and Microsoft's built-in AI assistant, Copilot, directly utilizes OpenAI's recently launched GPT-4o.

Microsoft specifically mentioned that these models are not simply "tied together," but have been deeply integrated.

It is understood that one of the most direct enhancements GPT-4o brings to Copilot is the ability for Copilot to truly "see your screen," allowing Copilot to answer questions based on the content visible on your screen.It is worth mentioning that this "AI screen reader" function seems to have become a key "consensus" between Microsoft and Apple in building system-level AI capabilities. This is because Apple just released a technical paper on April 8th about understanding mobile screen content through large models, which mentioned that Apple is trying to make AI understand every element on our mobile screens, from text, images, videos to the functions represented by various button graphics.

PC manufacturers are releasing AI PC new products intensively.

Apart from Microsoft, for the industry that wants to break through in the existing market, AI may be a strong stimulant. Both mobile phone manufacturers and PC manufacturers are actively deploying related products.

On May 9th, HP released a series of AI products such as the EliteBook series high-end AI business notebook and the War series AI business notebook at the "2024 HP Commercial AI Strategy and AI PC New Product Launch" held in Beijing. HP's Global Senior Vice President and President of Greater China, Zhuang Zhengsong, stated, "HP integrates innovative AI products with the local ecosystem to provide customized industry solutions for Chinese enterprises."

Lenovo recently held a launch event titled "AI for All, Filling the World with AI" to update the progress of AI-related business and products; on March 18th, Honor released its first AI PC product "MagicBook Pro 16"; Huawei released the MateBook XPro at the Huawei HarmonyOS ecosystem spring communication meeting on April 11th, which applied Huawei's Pangu large model for the first time.

Not only that, but Apple has just released the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip. Apple's Vice President of Platform Architecture, Tim Millet, said that this M4 chip has a computing speed of 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60 times that of the first neural engine on the A11 Bionic, coupled with the new generation of machine learning accelerators in the CPU, high-performance GPU, and more memory bandwidth, the M4 chip can handle AI tasks, and its performance is enough to dominate today's AI PCs.In the long run, AI PCs seem to have a promising future, but IDC also points out that the development of AI PCs is a dynamic concept, divided into AI Ready and AI On stages. The former refers to the upgrade of chip computing architecture, while the latter refers to having a complete AI PC innovative experience.

AI PCs May Reshape the PC Industry

Driven by the new wave of AI, AI PCs, as a new generation of products that apply artificial intelligence technology to personal computing devices, have begun to be highly anticipated by the market. From mid-April to early May, in less than a month, manufacturers such as Huawei, Lenovo, and Apple have successively released their own AIPC products. With Microsoft's entry, the AI PC track will undoubtedly become very hot.

The "AI PC Industry White Paper" defines AI PCs as having the following five major characteristics: embedded personal large models, with personalized local knowledge bases; equipped with local mixed AI computing power of CPU, GPU, NPU; having an open AI application ecosystem; capable of using natural language interaction; and having device-level personal data and privacy security protection.

The ability to run (not through the cloud) personal large models locally is the most important feature that distinguishes AI PCs from traditional PCs. The hardware core that supports AI PCs to run large models locally is computing power. On the basis of traditional PC hardware, AI PCs integrate mixed AI computing power units to support complex artificial intelligence algorithms and a large amount of data processing. AI PCs are usually equipped with higher-performance processors, capable of supporting heterogeneous computing including CPU, GPU, and NPU, with stronger overall computing power support capabilities, able to run "personal large models" locally, create personalized local knowledge bases, and achieve natural language human-computer interaction.

Among them, the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) is a chip specifically designed for neural network computing, with higher efficiency and lower power consumption, mainly used in end-side AI, and together with traditional CPUs and GPUs, it forms the core computing power of AI PCs.

AI PCs have high requirements for computing power. Just for the NPU, it requires at least 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). At present, the latest chips released by AMD and those expected to be released by Intel within the year will both be able to meet this minimum threshold requirement.Beyond meeting hardware requirements, there is also a need for "killer" applications to be implemented. Copilot, which relies on the Windows operating system, is undoubtedly such a "killer" application. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, all PCs upgraded to the latest Windows 11 version can use Copilot. However, Copilot currently depends on the computing power of Microsoft Azure cloud, which is unrelated to the PC hardware itself, and is not a true AI PC. It is only when Copilot can run locally and deeply integrate into the Windows system level that it can be considered a true AI PC.

It is worth mentioning that according to the latest forecast from Canalys, by 2024, there will be 48 million AI-enabled personal computers shipped worldwide, accounting for 18% of the total PC shipments. But this is just the beginning of a significant market transformation. In 2025, the shipments of AI-enabled personal computers are expected to exceed 100 million units, accounting for 40% of the total PC shipments.

Canalys estimates that by 2028, suppliers will ship 205 million AI-enabled personal computers, with a compound annual growth rate of an astonishing 44% between 2024 and 2028. These PCs integrate dedicated AI accelerators, such as neural processing units (NPUs), which will unleash new functionalities in productivity, personalization, and energy efficiency, disrupting the PC market and bringing significant value gains to suppliers and their partners.

06

Both software and hardware ecosystems are working together

As a key move in Microsoft's bet on Arm architecture chips, the entire Windows on Arm ecosystem was also unveiled by Microsoft on Monday. Along with the launch of the first batch of Copilot+PCs next month, Google Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, video editing software DaVinci Resolve, and several Adobe applications will all natively support the Windows system developed for Arm chips.

An era of AI PCs may have already begun...