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The titans of the chip industry descended on Taiwan this week to claim an “AI PC revolution” that promises the biggest advances in decades in the way consumers and office workers interact with their personal devices.
The annual Computex conference was the site of an unprecedented gathering of the CEOs of Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Arm, who delivered speeches with flashy AI-generated videos and publicity stunts to prove their technology behind artificial intelligence chips. .. PCs – many of which are manufactured in Taiwan – were the most powerful and efficient.
Computex was “the most distinct opportunity for each of the chipmakers to tell their own AI PC story,” said Ian Cutress, chip analyst at consultancy More Than Moore, ahead of what industry experts predict will be a surge in demand to AI PCs in the US the upcoming months.
These notebook and desktop computers are embedded with specialized silicon to run AI applications such as digital assistants and software that can generate everything from code to videos on the device itself, rather than relying on cloud services.
“When I think about the PC market, this is the most exciting moment in 25 years since the advent of WiFi,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a speech that included a chatbot that said its products were more price competitive than those of its rivals. Qualcomm chief Cristiano Amon went further, saying the PC industry was being reborn, with the AI PC being the most significant development since Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.
Microsoft kicked off the AI PC race when it unveiled a line of AI-enabled personal computers in May. The devices going on sale this month will come equipped with Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, and include a new “recall” tool that can quickly retrieve what users have viewed on their machines by periodically taking snapshots of their screens. to hit.
It selected Qualcomm as its first AI chip supplier, despite its Arm-based processors accounting for a small share of PC sales in a Windows market traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD and their rival x86 architecture .
Analysts say Microsoft wants to encourage more competition. Cutress said Qualcomm was “more willing to be flexible” to Microsoft’s technical demands to gain a foothold in PCs and diversify from the traditional realm of smartphones.
Qualcomm’s Amon called the partnership a “historic” defining moment, combining the chip with Microsoft’s software and ushering in “a new era for the PC.” He said the company “has never received any credit as a computer company.”
But Intel and AMD aren’t far behind in deploying their AI chips in PCs. AMD unveiled two new processors for AI PCs at Computex, which will start shipping in large numbers late next month. Intel said it expected the Lunar Lake processor, a flagship chip aimed at AI PCs, to ship in the third quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. It would be featured in 80 AI PCs from 20 manufacturers, it added.
“Considering them [Intel and AMD’s] Thanks to decades of close relationships with PC manufacturers, I suspect they would best adapt to the AI PC market,” said Rakesh Kumar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Taipei’s rush to release products for the “AI revolution” seemed designed to steal a march on Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off Monday in Silicon Valley and is expected to introduce a range of AI features for products powered by in-house chips.
The frenzied activity comes just as the PC market is recovering, with 3.2 percent annual growth in the first quarter, according to research group Canalys. There had been two years of weak sales after a boom driven by the shift to working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morgan Stanley analysts said AI PCs will be a key contributor to the next phase of PC market growth as penetration rises from 2 percent in 2024 to 65 percent in 2028 and as companies opt for PCs that feature AI. running applications on the device as a lower-cost, lower-cost solution. more secure and flexible option than in the cloud.
Kumar said the PC market should also “watch out for Nvidia,” even as its main focus now is on consolidating its lead in AI processors for data centers. Nvidia started out as a chipmaker for gaming PCs, but the AI boom has resulted in 87 percent of its $26 billion in sales in the first quarter of this year coming from data center products.
Kumar said Nvidia “could leverage their GPU [graphics processing unit] advantage” to “be competitive in the AI PC market.” Microsoft has already announced that it will use its GPUs in future AI PCs.
Smaller hardware manufacturers are also entering the new market, with dozens of consumer electronics makers from Taiwan and China using Computex to demonstrate accessories customized to integrate AI software, including keyboards and headsets with dedicated Copilot buttons to bring out the application.
Despite the AI upgrade, analysts wonder whether consumer demand will be strong enough to justify the higher price tags for more powerful hardware.
“What drives people to upgrade their devices is increased productivity,” says Cutress. “Can you work faster with these devices? We’re at the point where the hardware is there. But we still have to see if there is software that can answer this question.”
Additional reporting by Camilla Hodgson in London