Author of this article: Li Xiaoyin

Source: Hard AI

Microsoft fights back against AI PCs.

On Monday, May 20, EST, Microsoft held a major new product launch in Washington's new campus. Microsoft CEO Nadella announced at the conference that its latest Copilot+ AI PC plans to use new Surface devices equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips and its cooperative systems, and plans to restructure the core components of Windows 11 to better support ARM architecture and AI technology.

The Snapdragon X Elite chip is a next-generation Arm SoC (System on Chip) designed for Windows devices, based on the new Arm CPU core.

Microsoft's move can be said to be another major breakthrough in the Windows on Arm (WoA) field.

Since Microsoft launched the Windows RT operating system in 2012, the company's development in the WoA field has been questioned.

According to reports, Windows RT is based on the ARM architecture, but it runs much slower than PCs equipped with Intel and AMD CPUs based on x86 architecture, and system applications have no outstanding advantages, and users generally report that the operation experience is poor.

Microsoft said at the press conference this time that the company not only redesigned the Windows 11 scheduler and driver calculation model, connected to an emulator called “Prism” to support older x86 and x64 applications, but also integrated a new AI API, which will enable developers to make better use of AI functions.

Earlier this month, Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows devices, told the media:

“We're optimizing binaries and windows for specific workloads, so we can optimize common scenarios for Copilot+ PC customers and ensure a meaningful increase in machine responsiveness.”

Why is WoA important? Will Microsoft be the biggest winner?

WoA AI PC refers to an AI PC using a CPU designed based on the ARM architecture.

Morgan Stanley previously published a research report on WOA, pointing out that the energy efficiency of the chip is the key to AI PC victory — and this is the advantage of the Arm architecture.

As more and more manufacturers want to integrate processors dedicated to AI tasks, such as NPU (dedicated hardware processor for neural network processing) or APU (processor with integrated CPU and GPU), into their products, Arm's excellence in power consumption and edge artificial intelligence inference tasks is becoming more prominent. The report predicts that with the introduction and rapid spread of AI PCs, WoA will become a major growth driver with lower power consumption.

It can be said that under the continuous iteration of AI technology and the continuous impetus of demand for energy efficiency, “Wintel” based on the x86 architecture is shifting to “WoA” based on the Arm architecture, and WoA has become a necessary place for major companies to seize the AI PC market ahead of schedule.

According to IDC data, in 2023, Microsoft's Windows operating system had a market share of 79% in the PC market, followed by Apple macOS (11%) and Google Chrome OS (9%).

For Microsoft, maintaining the dominant position of the Windows system is essential for future deployment of AI services such as Copilot.

However, previously, as Microsoft's main competitor in the PC market, Apple had already used self-developed chips based on the ARM architecture in its macOS, but Microsoft's progress in this field has been slow to improve.

The importance of yesterday's Copilot+ AI PC initiative is self-evident.

According to the press conference, thanks to the powerful NPU in the Snapdragon X Elite chip, the Copilot+ PC integrated into Windows 11 can run more than 40 trillion operations per second, which is more than four times the average performance of current AI PCs and twice the performance of Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Additionally, the new Prism emulator supports x86 and x64 applications and is 20% faster than previous emulators. x86 and x64 applications running through the emulator are more than twice as performant as previous ARM versions of Windows. Davuluri said in this regard:

“By combining the Prism emulator with an optimized CPU, we can have excellent native applications, and the breadth of applications is comparable to other Windows products today.”