[News] Battle in AI PCs: Exploring Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm Chips’ AI Computing Power

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The global laptop and PC market is experiencing a gradual recovery, driven by the growing trend of AI-powered PCs (AIPC). Consequently, as per a report from TechNews, the competition to enhance AI chip computing power has emerged as a key global focus. 

One of the competitors, Intel, during its Vision 2024 event, showcased its next-generation laptop chip, Lunar Lake. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that this chip will deliver over 100 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of AI performance, with the NPU alone contributing 45 TOPS. This marks a threefold increase in AI performance compared to Intel’s current generation of chips and meets the 45 TOPS NPU performance threshold previously set by Intel for the next generation of AI PCs.

Currently, Intel’s Meteor Lake processor NPU can only deliver 10 TOPS, which falls short of the standard required for the next generation of AI PCs. However, the NPU performance of Lunar Lake precisely meets the 45 TOPS standard.

Pat Gelsinger did not provide detailed breakdowns of the remaining 55+ TOPS performance between the CPU and GPU, but it can be reasonably speculated that the GPU contributes around 50 TOPS, while the CPU cores contribute 5-10 TOPS.

As for Intel’s competitors, AMD’s current-generation Ryzen Hawk Point platform offers NPU performance of 16 TOPS, which is also below Intel’s envisioned standard for the next generation of AI PCs.

However, AMD has recently indicated that their next-generation products will make significant breakthroughs to meet the demands of AI computing, incorporating a robust architecture with powerful CPU, GPU, and NPU components. This design philosophy has been consistent for AMD from the Ryzen 7040 series to the current 8040 series.

At an AI event in December last year, AMD unveiled the next-generation Ryzen Strix Point mobile processor featuring the XDNA 2 architecture, boasting a threefold increase in AI performance compared to the previous generation.

Yet, AMD has not provided detailed performance allocations for each component. Nonetheless, a simple calculation suggests that if the NPU performance triples, then the NPU performance of Ryzen Strix Point would reach 48 TOPS.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite platform represents another competitor in the escalating competition, with chips based on ARM-based architecture scheduled to launch in mid-2024. Qualcomm has stated that its NPU performance will reach 45 TOPS, further heightening the competition among Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm for dominance in the next generation of AI computing.

Read more

• [News] AMD Hosts Innovation Summit, CEO Lisa Su Highlights the Beginning of AIPC Era
• [News] PC Market on the Rise, Tremendous Potential for AIPC Next Year

(Photo credit: Intel)