Microsoft CEO Satya Narayana Nadella speaks at a Microsoft Live event in Manhattan on October 26, 2016 in New York City.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
MicrosoftFollowing this month’s announcement by OpenAI and Google.
One area where Microsoft has a clear advantage over other companies in the artificial intelligence race is its ownership of Windows, which gives the company a massive PC user base.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in January that 2024 will be the year artificial intelligence becomes “a first-class component of every PC.”
The company already offers the Copilot chatbot assistant in its Bing search engine and a paid service in its Office productivity software. Now PC users will learn more about how AI is embedded in Windows and what they can do with it on their new AI PCs.
A few days later, at the Google I/O conference, the search giant unveiled its most powerful artificial intelligence model yet and demonstrated how its Gemini AI works on computers and mobile phones. Ahead of the Google event, OpenAI announced its new GPT-4o model. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI, and its Copilot technology is based on OpenAI’s model.
For Microsoft, the challenge is twofold: maintain its prominence in artificial intelligence and boost PC sales.
In a recent note Dell Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring told investors he remains “bullish on PCs” due to customer comments and recent upward revisions to “notebook” original design manufacturer (ODM) production market recovery”.
Technology industry research firm Gartner estimates that PC shipments increased 0.9% this quarter after years of sluggishness. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said on the company’s quarterly earnings call last month that demand for PCs was “a little better than expected.”
Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence tool could give business and consumer customers another reason to upgrade their aging computers, no matter who made them life valueDell or Lenovo.
“While Copilot for Windows won’t directly drive monetization, we believe it should increase Windows usage, Windows stickiness, and customer demand for more expensive, more powerful PCs (and thus the revenue per device for Microsoft). more revenue), and possibly search revenue,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a note to investors on April 26, the day after Microsoft reported earnings.
While Microsoft will provide software to handle some artificial intelligence tasks sent to the Internet, its computers will be powered by AMD, Intel and Qualcomm Offline artificial intelligence work. For example, this might include using your voice to ask Copilot to summarize the transcription without connection.
What is an artificial intelligence computer?
The key hardware complement of artificial intelligence computers is the so-called neural processing unit. NPUs go beyond the capabilities of traditional central processing units (CPUs) and are designed to handle artificial intelligence tasks.Traditionally they are used by companies like apple Improve photo and video or voice recognition.
Microsoft has yet to reveal what its artificial intelligence computers can do without an Internet connection. However, Google’s PIxel 8 Pro mobile phone does not have a complete computer processor and can use Gemini Nano AI to summarize and transcribe recordings, recommend text message replies, etc.
Computers equipped with Intel’s latest Lunar Lake chips (equipped with dedicated NPUs) are expected to be available by the end of 2024. .
Intel explain These chips enable features such as “real-time language translation, automated reasoning, and enhanced gaming environments.”
Apple has been using NPUs for years, most recently highlighting them in the iPad Pro’s new M4 chips. The M4 chip is expected to launch in the next round of Macs sometime this year.
Windows on the arm
Qualcommunlike Intel and AMDproviding chip power supply armBased on architecture. A Microsoft conference will discuss the “next generation of Windows on Arm,” which will likely cover how Windows runs on Qualcomm chips and how it differs from Intel and AMD versions of Windows.
According to recent data, Intel still controls 78% of the PC chip market, followed by AMD at 13%. Data from Canalys.
In the past, Qualcomm has promoted Snapdragon Arm-based computers by touting other benefits such as longer battery life, thinner designs and cellular connectivity. But early versions of Qualcomm chips offered consumers limited capabilities. In 2018, for example, the company’s Snapdragon 835 chip couldn’t run most Windows apps.
Microsoft has since improved Windows to handle legacy applications on Arm, but problems remain.The company even has a FAQ page Designed for computers running on ARM hardware.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere
Microsoft will also hold conferences such as “AI Everywhere” to discuss how to “accelerate the generation of artificial intelligence models” on devices running in the cloud.
The “Azure AI Studio” session will explore how developers can create their own Copilot chatbots, which may be similar to what Google and OpenAI have done with Gemini and ChatGPT. For example, imagine a company creates a chatbot that helps employees choose health benefits.
About The Author
