tomshardware[.]com/pc-components/cpus/intel-confirms-microsoft-copilot-will-soon-run-locally-on-pcs-next-gen-ai-pcs-require-40-tops-of-npu-performance
Microsoft's been purposely vague, sticking to their hype of how wonderful life will be with a new AI PC. They've said early on that all sorts of companies like Adobe will be involved with plugins etc., but there's been no info since. Until now however, there's been no word on what sort of hardware it would take, and nothing specific on why any of it might matter. Intel execs have finally shed *some* light on what's going on...
An AI PC/laptop will need an NPU [Neural Processing Unit] capable of 40 TOPS of performance, plus the CPU & GPU, and likely strictly from Microsoft's marketing dept., a Copilot key on the keyboard. Part of the answer to the "Why would anyone want it" question is that parts of Copilot will run on the PC/laptop rather than in the cloud. Microsoft has been adding functions / commands to Copilot to control & use Windows -- stuff that you could always do manually on your own, and for the most part faster than waiting for Copilot to do the same things. Without the lag from contacting Microsoft's servers where Copilot's running that might change, so you might [finally] be able to literally tell your PC what you want and it would do it quickly.
One question was whether Windows new AI would actually require an NPU, since Chat GPT and other AI brands all run on 10s of thousands of GPUs, and every single PC/laptop has one of those. It wasn't even confirmed that Intel & AMD would include an NPU with the new desktop processors. Now it appears the answer is yes, an NPU is required because Microsoft doesn't want power hungry GPUs reducing battery life in laptops. That said, it's too early to say that Copilot will not run just fine using existing GPUs -- just that an NPU is required for the AI PC label. And while anything Microsoft related can change, they have hinted that with the next version of Windows coming this fall, they will not issue new hardware requirements like they did with Win11.
Intel also included some bad news... right now gamers have to deal with brand-specific features from AMD & Nvidia, and Intel is intent on starting the same sort of feature war with ARM and AMD. Microsoft is not favoring one brand over another in Windows, but Intel is pushing their own framework that of course favors Intel. To compete ARM & AMD will likely follow, so you'll have to choose your next CPU not just based on price/performance, but on which features you want/need. Just what we don't need -- more fragmentation.