Author |Mangosteen.
Produced by |Zinc industry.
In the past Q3 of 2023, PC shipments continued to decline.
IDC's statistics are that this Q, the global PC fell by 76%。
However, IDC believes thatThe PC market may be at the bottom**
The main reason for this conclusion is still from the data - PC shipments have increased in the past two Q, and the year-on-year decline is also slowing down.
In addition, the emergence of a new increment also affects the judgment of IDC, and this increment is AI PC.
The advent of AI PCs will accelerate the arrival of the replacement wave
This is a core point of view in the "AI PC Industry (China)**" jointly released by IDC and Lenovo.
This point of view appears in almost all PC industry research reports this year, and it is also the major Internet giants this year shouting that all products are worth redoing with large modelsAn important copy
For PC manufacturers, they have been waiting for such an opportunity for a long time.
From 2011 to 2018, the global PC market struggled with negative growth for eight consecutive years, and now, Q3 2023 is the eighth quarter in which the global PC market is desperately struggling in the negative growth cycle.
In this year when all walks of life are frantically leveraging large models, can AI PC become an opportunity for the PC industry to jump out of the downward curse?
It's a mystery to look forward to.
If you want to build an AI PC, you must first know thatWhat is AI PC
And this, we have to start with the AI chip war.
In the past decade, as the recognized king of AI chips, Nvidia has almost swallowed the entire rapidly rising AI empire.
As a result, NVIDIA's market capitalization has soared all the way, 10 billion, 100 billion, and now more than 1 trillion US dollars.
This once young "little brother" in the eyes of Intel and AMD has now become a strong opponent that none of them dares to ignore.
What cannot be ignored is a new era of computing called AI.
Especially in 2023, the craze for the formation of a new AI paradigm has made AI fanatics begin to believe that all products are worth redoing with large models.
Silicon Valley investors set AI as the minimum investment standard, OpenAI scientists and entrepreneurs staged an annual palace fight, and the "honest man" Zhou Hongyi even pointed out that someone even asked him to make a large model of pig breeding beforeEveryone(this year).There is a lot of unrealistic worship of the big model.
As a result, the PC industry, which is waiting to be redeemed, also looks to the large model, and AI PC quietly appears.
Counterpoint statistics show that in the third quarter of 2023, the top five global PC shipments are:Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Asus
In addition to HP, the other four companies have different degrees of shipments**.
The decline of the PC industry has become the norm, and such a ** is not unusual.
In Counterpoint's statistical report, what is more noteworthy is that it also gives such a **::
By 2026, the market share of PCs with AI capabilities will exceed 50%.
At the same time, another market research agency, Canalys, recently gave a similar set of data:
It is estimated that in 2024, the market share of PCs with AI functions will reach about 19%.
By 2027, the market share of AI-enabled PCs will reach 60%.
Of course, it is not the research institute that really promotes the "entry" of AI PCs, but the ancient Wintel Alliance.
In September 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told a new story about "siliconomy" at the Technology Innovation ConferenceAI PC is an important chapter
Kissinger said, "We believe that AI is now ushering in the next PC era – the AI PC era." ”
Intel, which missed the era of mobile Internet and missed the throne of the king in the first half of artificial intelligence, pinned its hopes for a re-rise on AI PCs this time.
To this end, Kissinger announced the processor in a high-profile mannermeteor lake, reorganized"New Wintel Alliance"., and even rare to see AMD Su Zifeng, NVIDIA Huang Jenxun together for Lenovo platform.
Just to seize this opportunity.
October 24, 2023, is a lively and good day for Lenovo.
On this day, Lenovo moved Tech World to Texas, USA, because this time, Lenovo wanted to play big.
Judging from the guests of the official conference, Lenovo invited Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, AMD CEO Su Zifeng, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon ......
To bring together the world's top technology tycoons who have clashed on various occasions, in addition to the fact that Lenovo is the No. 1 manufacturer in the global PC market in terms of shipments, more importantly:
At the turn of the old and the newThese bigwigs have their own plans in the field of AI PC
Among them, Qualcomm is the most typical one.
Strictly speaking, Amon did not go to the Lenovo Tech World 2023 site (showed his face online), because on the day of Lenovo Tech World 2023, Qualcomm was busy with its annual summit, the Snapdragon Summit, on the beautiful Hawaiian island in the Pacific Ocean.
Different from the previous Snapdragon summits, at this summit, Qualcomm not only invited a number of mobile phone manufacturers to promote large models on mobile phones, but also focused on releasing an AI chip for PC-x elite
Qualcomm officially claims that the performance of this PC chip based on the ARM architectureIt's 50% higher than the Apple M2and, more importantly, this chipIt can run a large AI model with 13 billion parameters
After many years, Qualcomm returned to the PC market in the hope of the rise of AI PCsSnatch some market share from Intel and AMD
To this end, Qualcomm also "invited" Lenovo, and the zinc industry also saw Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who attended the Snapdragon Summit (several technology bigwigs have been busy in the past two months).
PC is Intel's main revenue**, related businessAccounting for more than 50%., Intel naturally does not want to let others share the food.
At the Intel Technology Innovation Conference, Gelsinger spent nearly an hour explaining what an AI PC is, what Intel is laying out, and announced:
Intel will officially announce the code name on December 14meteor lakemobile processorsCore Ultra
This processor is the first consumer-grade PC processor with a built-in NPU and the first processor that Intel has carefully prepared for AI PCs.
Some people may ask, shouldn't AI PC be defined by PC manufacturers?
This is not the case. In the early stages of AI PC, whether a PC is an AI PC or not,It depends on whether it can carry the large model, and whether it can bring a large model,It depends on how much computing power the PC's processor has
IDC's definition of AI PC in "AI PC Industry (China)** is:
A personal AI assistant tailored to everyone.
At a time when most ordinary people can't even understand what a large model is and what an AI assistant is, such a definition is obviously too vague.
A more direct definition should start from computing power, at present, the processor of AI PC should have two characteristics:
It is necessary to have an NPU dedicated to handling the AI load
The computing power must reach at least 40tops
Qualcomm is equipped with NPU X Elite, with a computing power of up to 45TOPS;AMD is equipped with NPU's Ryzen 8040, and the computing power has also reached 39TOPS;Intel's Meteor Lake is also equipped with an NPU, and the specific computing power is yet to be announced.
Just like the big model,The first generation of AI PCs is destined to be a generation of products that are matured by high computing power
In August 2016, just eight months after OpenAI was founded, Huang brought Nvidia's first AI supercomputer to OpenAI's office in San Francisco.
The purpose of the trip was to give the supercomputer to the OpenAI team, and the recipient was Musk, who was the chairman of OpenAI at the time.
At GTC 2023 in March this year, Huang presented this donation of supercomputing to OpenAI.
In a sense, Lao Huang, who was humble but desperate at that time, pressed the lifeblood of an era.
And this past shows the poisonous vision of the prophet.
Seven years later, when the large model became the "savior" of the revival of science and technology, OpenAI was hot for a while, Nvidia made a lot of money, Huang Sect Leader killed all sides in a leather coat, and Musk retreated to become a bystander.
In 2023, the big model that will shock the global technology industry will beHow do you unleash the energy and spread the first ripples in the global economy?
After several studies, scientists and decision-makers in technology companies around the world have finally summed up such a word in the business world:rag
rag，retrieval-augmented generation，Retrieval enhancement generation, from a 2020 study by Patrick Lewis, a researcher at the Facebook AI Research Center (FAIR).
This term sums up the essence of the first large-scale commercial products including Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Google Bard, and DingTalk Magic Wand.
Behind the first wave of large-scale commercial products, there is a search engine war, as well as a search engine expansion battle.
Whether it is the battle of search engines, or the landing of the office software AI upgrade extended from it, allLet the PC industry, which has not changed for a long time, smell the opportunity
At the Intel Technology Innovation Conference in September this year, Chen Junsheng, CEO of Acer, brought the first notebook equipped with Intel Core Ultra to the stage, emphasizing that "the era of AI PC has arrived." ”
In fact, the MSI Prestige AI Evo, a notebook equipped with Intel Core Ultra, has been available for pre-sale in the United States in November this year, with a starting price of $1,049 (about 7,600 yuan).
And including:Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro AI Ultrabook 2024, ASUS Zenbook 14 2024The first batch of AI PCs equipped with this processor have also been officially announced on the road.
What is the killer app for AI PC?
The people who create the next generation of killer apps are killer apps. ”
In the face of developers from all over the country, Kissinger gave such a flattering answer.
After the second-generation tech giants who grew up because of the PC industry personally went out to build momentumThe year 2024 has been stamped and confirmed as the first year of AI PCMore AI PCs will also be available in 2024.
However, until the first AI PCs hit the market, no one could say exactly what would be its killer application, even if that person was Kissinger.
About AI PC, what is more likely to touch people's hearts may be another of Kissinger's imaginations about AI PC:
It would be cool to have the ubiquitous big model running on everyone's PC and become everyone's personal assistant. ”
Chip manufacturers and PC manufacturers are full of expectations for AI PC, and industry analysts are extremely optimistic about the development of AI PC.
The data given by IDC in the *** on AI PC is:
The assembly ratio of AI PC in China's PC market will reach 85% by 2027, becoming the mainstream of the PC market
Also in this ***, another set of more radical ** data given by IDC is:
China's PC market will end its negative growth due to the arrival of AI PC, to maintain a steady growth trend in the next 5 years.
The total size of the desktop and notebook market will increase from 39 million units in 2023 to more than 50 million units in 2027That's an increase of nearly 28 percent.
In 2023, the PC industry is still struggling desperately on the edge of the negative growth cycle, and the global chip industry is also faltering in a declining trend.
If the story of AI PC is true, both the PC industry and the semiconductor industry will usher in an immeasurable new cycle.
And the key to opening this ** cycle is hidden in the spring of 2024.