Intel and Microsoft Collaborate to Advance AI for Windows 11 PCs

[GFreeman]

Microsoft and Intel are working together to drive the development of artificial intelligence (AI) on personal computing (PC). And at Microsoft's Build 2023 conference, Intel and Microsoft are previewing the AI-enabled capabilities of Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake client PC processors. Utilizing Meteor Lake processors' unique disaggregated architecture, Intel and Microsoft are enabling new AI-powered features for PC users - including new multimedia features like auto reframe and scene edit detection in Adobe Premiere Pro and more effective machine learning.

Meteor Lake marks a significant milestone in the evolution not just in personal computing, but also in how we interact with technology. It starts with the "chiplet" system-on-chip (SoC) design that allows Intel to deliver advanced intellectual properties (IPs) and leading-edge processes to optimize segment-relevant performance and lower power. This has enabled Meteor Lake to be the first PC platform from Intel featuring a built-in neural VPU, a dedicated AI engine integrated directly on the SoC to power efficiently run AI models. With the new neural VPU combined with powerful AI accelerators on the CPU and GPU, which Intel has been supporting for several generations, Meteor Lake will play a crucial role in shaping the future of innovation and PC experiences for consumers and businesses across industries.



And this is just the start. Intel and its partners in the PC category stand at the beginning of an exciting multiyear journey of AI-accelerated transformation at scale. Over the next year, Intel aims to ship millions of units of Meteor Lake with its dedicated AI engine. As Intel scales up even more with subsequent generations of products, that massive surge in scale and volume will put AI accelerated experiences in the hands of hundreds of millions of people and enable the intelligent collaboration, processing speed and capabilities needed to drive unprecedented change.

Intel and Microsoft - Enabling the PC Partner Ecosystem
Together, Meteor Lake and Windows 11 will scale across the ecosystem with Intel and Microsoft's OEM and ISV partners. It's a collaboration that both teams are incredibly excited about. And for the developer community that is so critical to bringing this to life, Windows represent the ideal place to run AI models to reach this huge user base.

"We're excited to collaborate on AI with Intel with the scale Meteor Lake will bring to the Windows PC ecosystem. Together, we are enabling developers to use ONNX Runtime and related toolchains to run their AI models optimally on the Windows platform," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice president, Windows Silicon & System Integration, Microsoft Corp.

In addition to ONNX-RT, with Meteor Lake developers can look forward to:

• Leveraging developer tools, including ONNX Runtime support enabled through OpenVino-EP and DirectML-EP.
• More effective machine learning on WinML/DirectML for acceleration of neural VPU and GPU.
• Microsoft Studio Effects including background blur, eye automatic-framing, voice focus.

Scaling AI begins with Intel
The PC industry is at a significant inflection point. Intel and Microsoft are working closely to bring new AI-enabled features to the PC experience - supporting the broader PC industry partner ecosystem to put these new experiences in the hands of millions of PC users.

To learn more about the exciting capabilities Intel and Microsoft are developing - made possible by the upcoming Meteor Lake processor family - please check out Intel's BUILD 2023 session.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Bomby569]

Maybe we can turn it all off if we have and AMD cpu, that counts as a win to me.
Sorry you can't use onedrive or the new cortana unless you buy a Intel CPU. Oh no! Anyway.

 

[Minus Infinity]

So Microsoft is teaming up with both Intel and AMD on AI. Seems a strange set up. Maybe AMD will leverage their MI300 while Intel can leverage Ponte Vecchio /s.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

I don't know whether I'm right or wrong in this, but something about Intel "partnering" with Microsoft to alter Windows to work with their hardware doesn't sit right with me....it probably has to do with Intel's proven history of illegal actions and other, though not technically illegal, less ethical behavior.

 

[pavle]

Whatever could go wrong?

 

[pressing on]

I don't know whether I'm right or wrong in this, but something about Intel "partnering" with Microsoft to alter Windows to work with their hardware doesn't sit right with me....it probably has to do with Intel's proven history of illegal actions and other, though not technically illegal, less ethical behavior.

This is about the VPU - Intel's dedicated AI hardware accelerator - that will be present on all the forthcoming Meteor Lake range. It's potentially a big deal but it might be worth noting that AMD's 7040U mobile chip range launched earlier this year was actually the first to have dedicated AI hardware in an X86 processor. This is the XDNA AI engine based on a Xilinx design and is likely to prove formidable opposition to the Meteor Lake equivalent. Microsoft will include support for AMD's AI hardware as well as Intel's from the outset, so I don't see any form of Intel monopoly developing here any time soon.

 

[dyonoctis]

Maybe we can turn it all off if we have and AMD cpu, that counts as a win to me.
Sorry you can't use onedrive or the new cortana unless you buy a Intel CPU. Oh no! Anyway.

AMD already got a head start on Intel with phoenix. Ryzen 7040 will also have plenty of AI accelerated stuff

 

[R0H1T]

This is about the VPU - Intel's dedicated AI hardware accelerator - that will be present on all the forthcoming Meteor Lake range. It's potentially a big deal but it might be worth noting that AMD's 7040U mobile chip range launched earlier this year was actually the first to have dedicated AI hardware in an X86 processor. This is the XDNA AI engine based on a Xilinx design and is likely to prove formidable opposition to the Meteor Lake equivalent. Microsoft will include support for AMD's AI hardware as well as Intel's from the outset, so I don't see any form of Intel monopoly developing here any time soon.

More like class leading, Xilinx was the numero uno in that space & looking at AMD's results in the last quarter they've only gained more market share. While Intel's acquisition of Altera wasn't a total disaster I don't remember them doing much with it, at least in the consumer space. Then again it's been hardly a year since the former's sold off to AMD.

 

[pressing on]

More like class leading, Xilinx was the numero uno in that space & looking at AMD's results in the last quarter they've only gained more market share. While Intel's acquisition of Altera wasn't a total disaster I don't remember them doing much with it, at least in the consumer space. Then again it's been hardly a year since the former's sold off to AMD.

From what I can see the initial use of AMD XDNA on the desktop will be for Windows 11 Studio Effects, as Microsoft put it "...improving your video and audio call experience". The improvements to software such as Adobe Premier Pro touted by Intel will also be supported by XDNA hardware. At this stage these are useful but not overwhelming advances, somewhat removed from the current hype around AI.

 

[hs4]

Various companies are working on abstractions for machine learning and inference processing; MS is making DirectML to work on nVidia, AMD, or Intel hardware, and Intel is working on ARC XMX, Movidius VPU, GNA, Altera FPGA, AVX-512 AMD is building OpenVINO for abstraction; what AMD needs to do is to get the Radeon ROCm and Xilinx AI IP abstraction layers in place as soon as possible.

More like class leading, Xilinx was the numero uno in that space & looking at AMD's results in the last quarter they've only gained more market share. While Intel's acquisition of Altera wasn't a total disaster I don't remember them doing much with it, at least in the consumer space. Then again it's been hardly a year since the former's sold off to AMD.

Altera is helping to hide its failure in the server market. In other words, they are looking to compensate for the low performance of their cores by adding specialized ASICs and FPGAs (IPUs in their branding). AMD is aware of this and will probably take the opposite position when Xeon becomes competitive again with the Granite Rapids and 18A generations.

 

[david salsero]

I don't know whether I'm right or wrong in this, but something about Intel "partnering" with Microsoft to alter Windows to work with their hardware doesn't sit right with me....it probably has to do with Intel's proven history of illegal actions and other, though not technically illegal, less ethical behavior.

+
You're right.
Highly suspicious, the problem is 1 day, said benefit from Windows to Intel would be detected and the entire community would fall on top of it.
What is clear is that Zen 4 7040 Phoenix is currently on the market and Intel still has a few long months to go and whose processors will be skyrocketing in prices.
In addition to the AI, the important thing is to see their RDNA 3 vs. Intel Xe graphics in the APUs, there is no discussion here, Intel has not been updated for 4 years for me, neglect and shame.