Intel says Microsoft’s Copilot AI will soon run locally on PCs — assuming those PCs meet the hardware requirements — potentially paving the way for more generative AI and other artificial intelligence tools to run locally.
There’s been a significant push from Intel and Microsoft around the ‘AI PC.’ Both companies have made a big deal about it, between Intel’s latest chips sporting neural processing units (NPUs) and Microsoft pushing manufacturers to add dedicated Copilot keys to get the designation.
However, this push has felt a bit weird with many of the big AI tools right now, including Microsoft’s own Copilot, not running locally. Instead, these AI tools require an internet connection and handle the majority of processing in the cloud. Even Google’s Gemini model is like this — despite having a ‘Nano’ variant intended to run on mobile devices, shocking few of Google’s AI features actually run on-device.
But that looks set to change. According to Tom’s Hardware, Intel says that elements of Copilot will soon run locally on PCs, with more of it moving local as PCs get more powerful. How powerful are we talking? Well, according to Intel, 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) on next-gen AI PCs.
“But to your point, there’s going to be a continuum or an evolution, where then we’re going to go to the next-gen AI PC with a 40 TOPS requirement in the NPU,” Todd Lewellen, VP of Intel’s client computing group, told Tom’s Hardware.
“[..]And as we go to that next-gen, it’s just going to enable us to run more things locally, just like they will run Copilot with more elements of Copilot running locally on the client. That may not mean that everything in Copilot is running local, but you’ll get a lot of key capabilities that will show up running on the NPU,” Lewellen said.
Lewellen also noted that Intel’s next-gen products will “be in that category.” Currently, Intel’s chips offer up to 10 TOPS of performance on the NPU, not quite what will be needed for local Copilot. AMD’s Ryzen Hawk Point platform has a 16 TOPS NPU, while Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite will boast 45 TOPS when it finally arrives later this year.
Notably, the X Elite is rumoured to power Microsoft’s upcoming new Surface Pro and Laptop hardware, which is also expected to arrive alongside more AI features. With the X Elite boasting 45 TOPS, that could mean the new Surface hardware will introduce local AI capabilities, like on-device Copilot.
Image credit: Microsoft
Source: Tom’s Hardware
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