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Over the last few years, the concept of an “AI PC” has gone from sounding like a desperate attempt to revive the computer industry to something that will actually change how we interact with PCs. To summarize, an AI PC is a system that runs on a CPU that has a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that is specifically designed for AI workloads. While NPUs have existed in mobile hardware for years, AMD is the first to release one. Ryzen Pro 7040 chip.
With its Ryzen AI 300 chips, AMD is making its biggest push yet into AI PCs, which may pay off in the future as more AI-driven features like Microsoft’s Recall become available (though that too was plagued by privacy concerns and has since been postponed). To get a better understanding of how AMD is approaching the AI PC era, we spoke with Rakesh Anigundi, head of Ryzen AI, and Jason Banta, Ryzen AI product lead and CVP and GM of client OEMs. You can listen to the full interview on the Engadget Podcast.
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My most pressing question is: how does AMD intend to get developers to start building AI-powered features? After all, the NPU isn’t a selling point if no one builds apps that use it. Anigandi said he’s well aware that developers generally “just want it to work,” so the company has built its strategy around three pillars: a robust software stack, high-performance hardware, and the adoption of open-source solutions.
“We have a philosophy of following standards, not inventing them,” Anigandi said. “That’s why we’re committed to ONNX, a cross-platform framework that gets the most performance out of the system. This is very closely aligned with how we work with Microsoft to enable their next generation experiences and OEMs. And on the other hand, we see a lot of innovation happening with smaller ISVs.” [independent software vendors]this strategy also works very well.”
He points out AMD recently released the Amuse 2.0 beta This is one of the ways the company is showing off the AI capabilities of its hardware: it’s a simple program for generating AI images that runs entirely on the NPU-powered device, without needing to access OpenAI’s DallE or Google’s Gemini in the cloud.
AMD’s Banta reiterated the need for a good toolset and software stack, but also noted that the company is working closely with partners such as Microsoft on prototype hardware to ensure quality of customer experience.[Consumers] You can have all the hardware, all the tools, all the base models, but to ensure the end customer experience is great, it takes a lot of direct, one-on-one time between us and our ISV partners.”
In this case, Banta also mentioned AMD’s relationship with Microsoft in terms of building the Copilot+ experience for AMD’s systems: While some AI features have been seen on the first batch of Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ machines, including the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, they’re not yet available on Copilot+ systems powered by AMD and Intel’s x86 chips.
“We’re trying to perfect that experience,” Banta said. For now, Ryzen AI 300 machines can be considered “Copilot+ Ready,” but they’re not fully Copilot+ ready yet. (As we noted in our Surface Pro review, Microsoft’s current AI features are pretty basic, and that’s probably not going to change until Recall is officially released.)
Regarding Rumor has it that AMD is developing an Arm-based CPUNaturally, the company’s executives didn’t reveal much. “Arm is a close partner to AMD,” Banta said. “We’re collaborating on a number of solutions across the roadmap… [the] “We can’t tell you anything about the entire CPU roadmap yet. We can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the near future yet.” But the same rumors also suggest that NVIDIA is also developing its own Arm chips, and given the incredible performance of Apple and Qualcomm’s latest mobile chips, it wouldn’t be too surprising if AMD heads down the same Arm-paved road.
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