[To be honest with technology] Where should the future path of the "AI PC" of the infant period go?

With the broader understanding of the general public to AIGC, all walks of life have set off a "AI Revolution", as if AI has become the main development direction that everyone has always pursued overnight, especially for PCs. The "AI PC" TV advertisement of the ghost animal ago, then the concept of AI PC has been widely proposed since the second half of last year. In just a few months, there have been a large number of Core Ultra processors, AMD 8000 series Ryzen Dragon The "AI PC" of the processor is listed, but the "famous" AI PC has a lot of problems.

4G for short videos and mobile games, through 4G faster network speed and lower latency, we can receive more information flow than before In addition, increasingly cheaper tariffs, 4G can be quickly popularized.

The current AI PC is lacking in this type of applications that can be inclusive to the public. Most of the user's perception of AI PC is a thunderous voice, but the actual experience does not perceive. It also said: "We are all looking for the 'killer application' that can promote PC updates and enter the new cycle. I believe that AI will become the ability to trigger the growth of the PC market."

The support of hardware is a very important aspect. Now the framework has been set up, and the content of the content is required. To let the user actively embrace the "AI PC", the upstream chip manufacturer and terminal product manufacturers need to speed up to find the killer AI Local applications allow the interior decoration to match the external luxury, and promote the replacement and purchase of users from the inside out.

一. Let "NPU" come in handy first

For the AI ​​PC, the biggest difference between the previous laptop and the processor is to add the "NPU" unit. Unlike the traditional computing core CPU and the display core IGPU, the NPU is a unit specially used for AI computing. Then, obviously, when running AI -related functions and applications, at least the NPU must be allowed to get involved in the work.

If you want to make NPU intervention, it is not the NPU "existence". It also needs to call and optimize the system and software level. Unfortunately, in the current few AI related applications, not all applications can call NPUs. If the NPU cannot be called to improve the performance or energy efficiency ratio, then for consumers, the desire for the AI ​​PC is definitely not high.

At the AI ​​PC summit recently held by AMD, AMD demonstrated four AIGC DEMOs on the spot, including Wen Shengwen, Wensheng, painting raw drawing, and code generation. During the official display, we also noticed that even the working state of NPU could not be seen in the task manager in the Windows system.

Third, the energy efficiency ratio may be more important than "computing power"

Intel said last year when it released its first Core Ultra processor equipped with NPU, the use of NPU is not only to improve AI computing power, but also the effect of increasing AI calculation. For example, when video conferences, the background, the background If the AI ​​function such as blur, background exchange, and human eye correction is used to use NPU for operations, the CPU packaging power consumption is reduced under the premise that the effect is not discounted, so as to enhance the effect.

Video conferences and live broadcast enhancement software XSplit VCAM can call NPUs in the Core Ultra processor for background blurring and replacement functions. According to the actual test, compared to putting the load on the GPU, the CPU packaging power consumption is reduced by 2.5 when using the NPU. ~ 3W.

When putting the load on the NPU, you can see that the NPU starts to work. At this time, the battery discharge power consumption is about 21.5W ~ 22.5W.

For AI applications, we may not expect how high the computing power it has. The consumer -grade CPU performance cannot be compared to the server chip. On the user side, if some commonly used and trivial AI function loads can be loaded to the energy efficiency ratio to the energy -efficient ratio Above the higher NPU, it will also be the future development direction of AI PC to increase the performance of battery life and reduce fuselage heat and fan noise.