Written by Jia Guipeng.
The new round of industrial revolution represented by intelligence is bringing mankind into a new era, followed by broad market opportunities and new development space.
At present, the craze of artificial intelligence has spread to the consumer side, and the technology giant Intel has also taken advantage of the development of AI to officially release its first AI PC Core Ultra processor, and then Lenovo, Dell, HP, Samsung, Asus and other PC manufacturers have also planned to launch AI PC products, this series of moves may directly promote the PC industry into the AI era.
But is the PC industry's move toward AI in full swing this year just because of its explosion this year?
Keeping pace with the times is the foundation for AI PCs to be launched
After ChatGPT exploded, it instantly ignited the world's enthusiasm for AI. As the biggest beneficiary of the AI era, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been promoting the value of AI all the time, saying, "The computer industry is ushering in a regeneration opportunity. In the next decade, new AI computers will replace trillions of dollars worth of traditional computers. ”
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said, "We see AI PCs as a key turning point in the PC market in the coming years, and we're going to incorporate AI into every product we make." ”
Previously, the AI PC Industry (China)** proposed that in the future, each individual can have their own AI PC and run their own "personal large model", and AI PC will become an indispensable personal AI assistant for individuals, families and enterprises.
Metaverse New Voice believes that in the digital era, the accelerated development of science and technology, and the continuous introduction of emerging technologies, are changing the trajectory of various industries. Keeping pace with the times, making productivity tools smarter, and allowing AI to assist users to complete tasks is the foundation of the launch of AI PCs.
As AI technology becomes more and more mature, it can accelerate the processing speed of image information, and empower the content creation market such as game development, graphic design, photography, and short **.
In fact, the principle of AI PC is very simple, that is, the CPU with the built-in AI application acceleration NPU unit in the whole machine, with the new PC form that supports AI systems and applications, it can very easily allow users to carry out new interactions through LLM (natural language model) and effectively improve the efficiency and quality of daily office, and it is also possible to deploy and install similar stable on the PC The large model of DIFFUSION is used for localized AI creation, which will completely change the usage habits and scenarios of PC users, and the PC is expected to be upgraded from a personal computing terminal to a personal AI terminal.
However, at this point in time, the PC industry is making efforts to AI, is it just because AI technology has developed rapidly this year?There may be factors in this regard, but the new voice of the metaverse believes that the deeper reason is that the PC industry needs a dose of fierce medicine to "save itself".
The PC industry needs a new concept stimulus
PC since the rapid promotion of the market in the 90s has gradually matured, however, we can also see from the development of the PC market in the United States that in the past 20 years, the growth rate of the PC market has gradually decreased, and the cyclical characteristics of the growth rate have weakened.
From historical data, according to IDC data, global PC shipments from 2017 to 2019 were stable at 2About 600 million units, people began to form the habit of online office and communication in 2020, the demand for remote work and education increased significantly, and PC shipments began to rise, and by 2021, global PC shipments reached 34.9 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 1518%;Starting in 2022, the global home scene will decrease, and the shipment volume of the PC market will decline to 29.2 billion units.
In 2022, inventory accumulation, manufacturers cut orders, and PC manufacturers started a battle, but consumer demand did not boost. According to IDC data, the current crowd structure of the PC consumer market is conservative, and the total proportion of thrifty herd users and smart and autonomous users who are sensitive to the best and pay attention to practical functions is close to sixty percent.
In the first quarter of 2023, the PC market remains sluggish. Data shows that in the first quarter of 2023, global PC shipments fell by nearly 30% year-on-year. This also became the lowest quarter in the PC industry in the past 10 years, except for the first quarter of 2020, when manufacturing and production were interrupted due to the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
In the quarter, Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Apple ranked among the top four in terms of shipments, of which Apple's PC shipments fell the most in the same period, exceeding 40%;Several other companies also saw double-digit year-over-year declines in shipments. Judging from the financial report, from revenue to net profit, PC manufacturers have experienced varying degrees of **.
Moreover, the downturn in the PC market has been passed to the upstream of the industrial chain, and when the market demand declines, it has to follow the order cut. In the first quarter, AMD, Intel, Micron and other chip manufacturers announced financial reports that the market demand for PC chips is still weak, long-term development may slow down, and the market is full of challenges.
Against this backdrop, the entire PC industry is looking for a second growth curve, and the epoch-making "AI" has naturally become their "lifesaver", so it is not surprising that a large number of AI PCs have been launched.
It is foreseeable that with the gradual launch of AI PC products, users will usher in a large wave of replacement, and the PC market is also expected to usher in a new growth peak. In the face of this historic opportunity that may disrupt the existing PC market pattern, various manufacturers have been "strong" and ready to enter the battlefield.
The response of the industry giants
Major PC manufacturers have cooperated with Microsoft, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, etc. to jointly promote the R&D and design of AI PCs, and it is expected that AI PC products of various brands will be launched one after another.
On December 14, Intel officially launched the AI PC processor, the new Core Ultra processor, codenamed Metor Lake. The processor will be equipped with an independent NPU AI unit, with three AI engines of CPU + GPU + NPU, through a separate modular architecture, bringing AI capabilities to each Core Ultra processor.
In terms of software ecosystem construction, Intel will provide software and application developers with tool support and assistance to support a broad x86 application ecosystem, so that both native and traditional AI applications can better run on PC clients.
Zhicong Wang, vice president of Intel Marketing Group and general manager of Intel China, said: "AI has gradually entered people's lives, and the era of intelligent, diversified and open AI has arrived, and AI PCs with stronger computing power will enable everyone to experience the convenience brought by AI. ”
On December 8, AMD announced the launch of the new Ryzen 8040 series mobile processors, which are bringing more high-performance AI PCs to market by integrating RyzenAI NPUs into select models of chips, with AI processing performance 1.1 more than previous AMD models6x to deliver a new premium experience and AI-ready capabilities.
In addition, to further facilitate a better AI experience, AMD also provides users with widely available RyzenAI software, enabling users to easily build and deploy learning models on AIPCs.
On October 25, Qualcomm launched the company's strongest computing processor for PCs so far at the Snapdragon Summit - Snapdragon Xelite, which integrates a new customized OryonCPU, Adrenogpu, AI engine, etc., and is an ARM architecture PC SoC with 4nm process. It is reported that OEMs are expected to launch PCs equipped with Snapdragon Xelite in mid-2024.
According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon Xelite is specially built for AI, and Xelite can support running 13 billion parameter large models on the terminal and generate 30 tokens per second for 7 billion parameter large language models.
When it comes to AI, PC manufacturers are more unanimous than ever. HP said it is expected to launch AI PC products next year"I've been in the industry for many years, but I've never seen an opportunity for AI to really drive innovation and meet new customer needs," said Lores, CEO of HP. ”
Dell is also providing hardware and other support while releasing the information of All in AIGC,John Roese, Global Chief Technology Officer, Dell Technologies, said: "AI PCs as computing platforms are designed to optimally run AI-based applications, and from the perspective of AI PC evolution, they need to provide more advanced processing power in the face of new workloads such as Microsoft Copilot and Adobe's AI image management. ”
But when it comes to reaction speed, HP and Dell still lag behind Lenovo. Lenovo has already released the first batch of the latest Intel-based AI PCs. Moreover, Lenovo already has a clearer plan for the future of the PC. "2024 will officially open the first year of AI PC, and in 2027, AI PC will become the mainstream of the market.
In addition, we can't forget a very special manufacturer, that is, the "self-sufficient" Apple, when it comes to Apple's layout in AI PC, we have to mention its M3 series (M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max) processors, Apple said that up to 128G of unified memory M3 Max processors, enough for developers to deal with AI large models containing billions of parameters.
While releasing the chips, Apple is also very focused on the ability to train and deploy AI models on its chips. Apple has unveiled MLX, an open-source array framework specifically for machine learning on Apple chips, designed specifically for machine learning researchers to train and deploy AI models efficiently. The design of the frame itself is also conceptually simple. Researchers can easily extend and improve MLX to quickly explore and test new ideas.
Metaverse New Voice believes that the PC industry needs new concepts to promote its development, and on the user side, people are also expecting AI to help their productivity tools, so AI PCs will definitely come, and the demand will be very large, which will promote the upgrading of devices.
Write at the end
For PC manufacturers, after a low point, they have finally found a way to re-focus computers in this era of electronic device saturation, when PCs become an integral part of the AI infrastructure, making them more valuable in productivity and digital entertainment, personal and business.
In the era of AI, all industries will change because of such huge changes, and the new voice of the metaverse sees that the first wave of AI PC has set off, and after the product landing, the PC industry will usher in a round of explosion. At present, it is not a simple matter to integrate everyone into the AI era, but with the linkage between the upstream and downstream of the PC industry, more AI PC products and technologies have evolved, bringing us one step closer to the vision of "AI inclusiveness".