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Titans of the chip industry descended on Taiwan this week to tout an “AI computing revolution” that promises the biggest advance in decades in the way consumers and office workers interact with their personal devices.
The annual Computex conference has been home to an unprecedented gathering of CEOs from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Arm, who delivered video speeches and AI-generated publicity stunts to prove their technology is behind chips for intelligence artificial-powered PCs—many of which were manufactured in Taiwan—were the most powerful and efficient.
Computex was “the most vocal opportunity for each of the chipmakers to tell their AI PC story,” said Ian Cutress, chip analyst at consultancy More Than Moore, ahead of what industry experts predict will be be an increase in demand for PCs with AI in. next months.
These laptops and desktops are embedded with specialized silicon to run AI applications, such as digital assistants and software that can generate everything from code to video on the device itself, rather than relying on cloud services.
“When I think about the PC market, this is the most exciting moment in 25 years since the advent of WiFi,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a speech that also featured a chatbot saying its products were more competitive in price than its rivals. Qualcomm boss Cristiano Amon went further, saying the PC industry was being reborn, with PC AI the most important development since Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.
Microsoft kicked off the AI PC race when it unveiled a series of AI-enabled PCs in May. The devices, which go on sale this month, will be equipped with Copilot, Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, and will include a new “replay” tool that can quickly recover what users have seen in their cars periodically saving snapshots of their screens.
It chose Qualcomm as its first AI chip supplier, despite its Arm-based processors having a small share of PC sales in a Windows market traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD and their rival x86 architecture.
Analysts say Microsoft aims to encourage more competition. Cutress said Qualcomm was “more willing to be more nimble” to Microsoft’s technical demands in order to gain a foothold in PCs and diversify from its traditional smartphone domain.
Qualcomm’s Amon hailed the collaboration as a “history-defining” moment marrying its chip with Microsoft’s software to usher in “a new era for the PC.” He said the company had “never taken any credit as a computer company”.
But Intel and AMD aren’t far behind in putting their own AI chips into PCs. AMD unveiled two new AI-powered PC processors at Computex that will begin shipping in volume late next month. Intel said it expected its Lunar Lake processor, a flagship chip aimed at AI computers, to ship in the third quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. It was set to appear on 80 PCs with AI from 20 manufacturers, he added.
“Considering them [Intel and AMD’s] Decades of close relationships with PC manufacturers, I suspect they would be best suited to the AI PC market,” said Rakesh Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The rush to roll out products in Taipei for the “AI revolution” appeared to steal a march at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in Silicon Valley and is expected to debut a range of AI features for products powered by in- home fries.
The flurry of activity comes just as the PC market is recovering, with 3.2 percent year-on-year growth in shipments in the first quarter, according to research group Canalys. There had been two years of poor sales following a boom in telecommuting during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morgan Stanley analysts said AI PCs would be key contributors to the next phase of PC market growth as penetration rises from 2 percent in 2024 to 65 percent in 2028 and as companies opt for PCs that use AI applications on devices as cheaper. more secure and flexible option than in the cloud.
Kumar said the PC market should also “watch out for Nvidia,” although its main focus now is to entrench its leadership in AI processors for data centers. Nvidia began as a maker of chips for gaming computers, but the AI boom has led to 87 percent of its $26 billion in sales coming from data center products in the first quarter of this year.
Kumar said that Nvidia can “leverage its GPU [graphics processing unit] advantage” to be “competitive in the AI PC market”. Microsoft has already announced that it will use its GPUs in future AI-powered PCs.
Smaller hardware makers are also flocking to the new market, with dozens of consumer electronics makers from Taiwan and China using Computex to showcase accessories tweaked to integrate AI software, including keyboards and headsets with dedicated buttons Copilot to display the application.
Despite the push to improve AI, analysts question whether consumer demand will be strong enough to justify higher prices for more powerful devices.
“What drives people to upgrade their devices is increased productivity,” Cutress said. “Do these devices enable you to work faster? We are at the point where the hardware is there. But we still have to see if there is software that can answer that question.”
Additional reporting by Camilla Hodgson in London
