Finance Associated Press, March 6 (Reporter Tang Zhixiao).Apple has also joined the AIPC melee. A few days ago, Apple released the MacBook Air series products equipped with the M3 chip, and claimed that the computer is "the best AI consumer notebook".
In fact, on the MacBook Pro series products released in September last year, the M3 series chips have already been unveiled.
It is understood that Apple's M3 series chips have significantly improved performance compared with the previous generation M1 series, and the neural network engine of the M3 chip is also 60% faster than the M1 series, and it also supports a maximum memory capacity of 128GB, which means that it can provide a large amount of video memory under the unified memory architecture, which is very beneficial for running large AI models and processing complex tasks.
In Apple's U.S. press release, it was mentioned that the MacBook Air can run optimized AI models locally, as well as support cloud-based solutions to run AI-enabled productivity and creative programs, including Microsoft Copilot, Canva, and Adobe Firefly for Microsoft 365.
Apple claims that AI image optimization with Photomator's Super Resolution feature is up to 40% faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15 times faster for the Mac that hasn't been upgraded to Apple's chip, i.e., the Intel chip.
"Leveraging AI capabilities, macOS offers smart features to help users be more productive and creative, such as camera capabilities, real-time speech-to-text, translation, text**, visual understanding, accessibility, and more," Apple said. ”
The reporter learned that Apple's A-series mobile processors and M-series processors have previously integrated hardware modules specifically designed to accelerate machine learning tasks, and provided a machine learning framework for Core ML.
At a recent shareholder meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook also spoke about the company's views on generative AI. He said Apple sees generative AI as having incredible breakthrough potential. He promised that later this year, Apple will show everyone how it is breaking new ground with AIGC. This is interpreted as Apple's upcoming new technology with significant impact, which has the potential to redefine the future of technology.
Guo Tao, an angel investor and artificial intelligence expert, told reporters: "Apple's advantage lies in its strong software and hardware integration capabilities. Apple's M3 series MacBook Air is a prime example of this, which combines Apple's own AI technology and hardware to provide users with a great experience. ”
Recently, AIPC has become a hot spot in the market.
Meghana Patwardhan, vice president of business computers and software at Dell, revealed at a press conference that in the short term, there are two types of PCs in the market with and without AI hardware, but in the long term, all personal computers will become AI computers.
Previously at MWC 2024, Honor launched Honor Launch Magic OS80. Magic model, as well as AIPC smart terminal MagicBook Pro 16, etc. Lenovo has also released a series of business AIPCs, all of which are powered by the latest generation of Intel Core Ultra processors.
In an interview with reporters, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said: "Honor's AI strategy is to do end-to-end AI and platform-level AI, and use AI to reconstruct the operating system to provide a more personalized and intelligent user experience. At the same time, Honor will also choose to cooperate with AI service providers to provide diversified AI applications. ”
Zhu Keli, executive director of the China Information Association and founding president of the National Research Institute of New Economy, told reporters: "At present, the application scenarios of AIPC have been quite extensive, covering education, entertainment and office. For example, in the field of work, AIPC can help users complete various tasks such as intelligent organization of documents and automatic reply to emails more efficiently. ”
According to CICC's research report, there will be three major upgrade trends in the chip segment in the future: the ARM architecture may increase the PC market share with its low power consumption and long battery lifeHeterogeneous computing may become the mainstream solution, and the operation of AI on the device side will also put forward higher requirements for memory, which will drive the penetration rate of DDR5 LPDDR5 and the increase of DRAM capacity.
Qualcomm President and CEO Ammon said in an interview with reporters: "Generative AI will transform the user experience on the device side, and PCs with generative AI capabilities can better understand user needs. ”
Qualcomm and Microsoft have joined forces to promote the transformation of Windows on ARM and promote the rapid development of the ARM PC ecosystem. With the upgrade of Windows 12 in 2024, it is expected to better support the ARM architecture through the modular underlying design, and with the continuous improvement of software and hardware adaptability, ARM PCs are expected to usher in an inflection point in 2024.
Wu Gaobin, Secretary-General of the Metaverse Working Committee of the Chinese People's Association, also believes that the popularity of AIPC has indeed brought new growth points to the PC market. More and more consumers are gravitating towards AI-enabled PCs to meet their needs for work, study, and entertainment. "Therefore, AIPC is expected to drive the shipment growth of the PC market to some extent. ”