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Titans of the chip industry descended on Taiwan this week to herald the “artificial intelligence computing revolution” that promises the biggest advance in decades in how consumers and office workers interact with their personal devices.
The annual Computex conference was the site of an unprecedented gathering of CEOs from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Arm, who delivered speeches with striking AI-generated videos and pitches to prove that their technologies behind AI chips – the most powerful and efficient were supported computers – many of which are made in Taiwan.
Computex was “the loudest opportunity for each of the chipmakers to tell their own story about AI computing,” said Ian Cutress, chip analyst at consultancy More Than Moore, ahead of what industry experts predict will be a surge in PC demand with artificial intelligence. the coming months.
These laptops and desktops are fitted 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 also featured a chatbot that said its products were more competitively priced than its competitors. Qualcomm boss Cristiano Amon went further and said that the computer industry is being reborn, with the artificial intelligence computer being the most important development since Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.
Microsoft kicked off the AI race when it unveiled a series of AI-powered personal computers in May. The devices, which go on sale this month, will feature Copilot, Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, and include a new “recall” tool that can quickly retrieve what users have been viewing on their computers by periodically taking screenshots of their screens.
It has chosen Qualcomm as its first AI chip supplier, even though its Arm processors have a small fraction of PC sales in the Windows market, traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD and their rival x86 architecture.
Analysts say Microsoft’s goal is to encourage more competition. Cutress said Qualcomm is “more willing to be more agile” to Microsoft’s technical demands to gain a foothold in PCs and diversify its traditional smartphone domain.
Qualcomm’s Amon hailed the collaboration as a “historic” defining moment when it combined its chip with Microsoft software and ushered in “a new era for the PC.” He said the company “never got any credit as a computer company”.
But Intel and AMD are not lagging behind in the deployment of their AI chips in PCs. At Computex, AMD unveiled two new processors for AI PCs that will start shipping in bulk at the end of next month. Intel said it expects its Lunar Lake processor, a flagship chip aimed at artificial intelligence computing, to be launched in the third quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. It was set to appear in 80 AI computers from 20 manufacturers, he added.
“Regarding their [Intel and AMD’s] decades of close relationships with PC manufacturers, I suspect they would be best suited to the AI PC market,” said Rakesh Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The rush of product launches in Taipei for the “AI revolution” appeared designed to steal a march on Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in Silicon Valley and is expected to showcase a range of artificial intelligence features for products powered by in-house tokens.
The frenetic activity comes just as the PC market is recovering, with shipments up 3.2% year-on-year in the first quarter, according to research group Canalys. There have been two years of weak sales after the boom from the shift to working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morgan Stanley analysts said artificial intelligence computers will be key contributors to the next part of the PC market growth as penetration rises from 2 percent in 2024 to 65 percent in 2028 and companies opt for computers running artificial intelligence applications such as a cheaper, safer and more flexible option than in the cloud.
Kumar said the PC market should also “watch out for Nvidia”, although it is now primarily focused on consolidating its leadership in data center AI processors. Nvidia started out as a maker of chips for gaming PCs, but the artificial intelligence boom drove 87 percent of its $26 billion in revenue from data center products in the first quarter of this year.
Kumar said that Nvidia could “use 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 artificial intelligence computers.
Smaller hardware makers are also flocking to the new market, with dozens of consumer electronics makers from Taiwan and China using Computex to showcase accessories modified to integrate AI software, including keyboards and headsets with special Copilot buttons to launch an app.
Despite the push to upgrade AI, analysts question whether consumer demand will be strong enough to justify higher prices for more powerful hardware.
“What drives people to upgrade their devices is increased productivity,” said Cutress. “Do these devices allow you to work faster? We are at the point where the hardware is. But it remains to be seen if there is software that can answer that question.”
More news from Camilla Hodgson in London