Just as expected, Intel has announced the launch of AI PCs, to build and run AI on every PC. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, at the AI Everywhere event announced the company’s partnership with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Supermicro, and Microsoft for onboarding the chips on their devices.

This is made possible by the Intel Core Ultra chips announced at the event along with the Intel Arc GPUs. Featuring a maximum of 8 XE GPU cores, the performance is akin to having an integrated Intel Arc 370M discrete GPU directly within the processor, albeit without the presence of dedicated video memory.

The announcement, first made at Intel Innovations a couple of months ago, highlights the processors as the company’s pioneering venture into incorporating a neural processing unit (NPU) into their chips.

Gelsinger added that Intel is dedicated to developing technologies that enable seamless integration and efficient operation of AI across various applications, both in the cloud and increasingly on local devices such as PCs and edge devices.

“We think 2024 marks the era of AI PC and that will be the star of the show in this coming year,” said Gelsinger. 

The AI PC concept aims to bring AI capabilities directly to personal computers, allowing users to run generative AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, locally, without relying on cloud data centres, and even for inference models such as Llama 2. This development is particularly significant for enhancing data security, a crucial aspect for business and enterprise users.

Intel aims to deliver 100 million client processors, which is five times more than any of the competitors. 

Furthermore, the Core Ultra processors bring about a paradigm shift with three major architectural features introduced to Intel’s laptop portfolio. Firstly, there is a departure from the conventional single-silicon-die design to a multi-chiplet-module (MCM) design. This novel approach involves bonding several smaller silicon chiplets together to create a single chip, offering increased versatility in chip functionality compared to previous processor generations.

AMD also announced at its Advancing AI event that it’s AI PC idea by partnering with Microsoft, Meta, and several OEM companies. At the AMD Advancing AI event, the company has unveiled various lines of AI announcements including the Instinct MI300X AI accelerators to compete with NVIDIA H100, updates to ROCm, and Ryzen AI PCs for on-device computing.