Intel Corporation today reported second-quarter 2024 financial results. "Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones. Second-half trends are more challenging than we previously expected, and we are leveraging our new operating model to take decisive actions that will improve operating and capital efficiencies while accelerating our IDM 2.0 transformation," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "These actions, combined with the launch of Intel 18A next year to regain process technology leadership, will strengthen our position in the market, improve our profitability and create shareholder value."

"Second-quarter results were impacted by gross margin headwinds from the accelerated ramp of our AI PC product, higher than typical charges related to non-core businesses and the impact from unused capacity," said David Zinsner, Intel CFO. "By implementing our spending reductions, we are taking proactive steps to improve our profits and strengthen our balance sheet. We expect these actions to meaningfully improve liquidity and reduce our debt balance while enabling us to make the right investments to drive long-term value for shareholders."

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has announced plans to introduce Snapdragon X-powered PCs at a groundbreaking price point of $700 by next year. This revelation, made during the company's recent third-quarter earnings call, signals a significant shift in the accessibility of high-performance Arm-based computers. Currently, the most affordable Snapdragon X laptops on the market, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, retail for $999. The $700 price tag prospect represents a substantial reduction, potentially opening up the technology to a broader consumer base. The only "affordable" Snapdragon X-based PC is the Snapdragon Dev Kit, with a price point of $899. However, the entire laptop solution is still more expensive. Mr. Amon emphasized that despite the lower cost of the potential $700 units, these upcoming devices will maintain neural processing unit (NPU) performance. This commitment suggests that Qualcomm is confident in its ability to optimize costs without sacrificing the advanced capabilities that have made Snapdragon X chips appealing to power users and developers alike.

While specific details about the hardware configurations remain undisclosed, it is interesting to see what steps Qualcomm will take to deliver on this promise. If the company can provide 8-core chips with 16 GB of RAM to the masses for $700, the industry would likely react very well, especially students who require decent computing capabilities on the go, if the $700 PC ends up being a laptop. The announcement also hinted at an expansion of Qualcomm-powered computers, with new models expected to debut at the upcoming IFA tech conference. These additions will likely bolster the selection of Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, further integrating AI capabilities into everyday computing experiences. The CEO also noted, "We expect PC to be the next biggest driver of diversification for the company," with some Snapdragon X PC already being sold out. The demand appears to be strong, and undercutting competition on pricing is an ideal way to get as many customers on board as possible.

ASUS is betting bigger on game consoles or PCs built like consoles. The company in 2023 introduced the first ROG Z13 Flow, a gaming-grade tablet, powered by a 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processor and mid-tier RTX 40-series "Ada" discrete mobile GPU. The 2025 ROG Z13 Flow is a 13-inch, 16:10 tablet with an integrated kickstand. You can use it like a handheld with touch controls, or place it on a surface and use conventional gaming peripherals, such as keyboard+mouse, or a game controller. Since the device is meant to provide a AAA gaming experience, it packs some serious kit.

Apparently, the 2025 ASUS ROG Z13 Flow will implement AMD's upcoming "Strix Halo" processor that packs up to 16 "Zen 5" CPU cores, and an oversized iGPU with 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units (2,560 stream processors), and a 256-bit LPDDR5 memory interface, besides a 50 TOPS-class NPU to qualify for Copilot+ AI PC rating. Such a chip would meet the hardware goals of the ROG Z13 Flow, and eliminate the need for a discrete GPU, letting ASUS reduce the mainboard size. The power management of "Strix Halo" would see the CPU and SoC given a roughly 30 W budget, and the iGPU roughly 80 W. Its cooling solution focuses squarely on the "Strix Halo" chip, with no other major chip on the device (the SoC is wired out to serve all chipset functions, no FCH needed).

Cixin Technology, a Chinese tech firm, has introduced the Cixin P1 (CP8180), the region's first AI-centric consumer processor. This new chip aims to disrupt domestic markets by capitalizing on the growing AI PC trend, featuring up to 45 TOPS. According to IT Home, Cixin needed 15 months of research and development, 4 months for production, and 3 months of testing for their first CPU.

The Cixin P1 utilizes ARM-based architecture, similar to Qualcomm's successful Snapdragon X Elite CPUs. Built on a 6 nm process, the chip boasts a 12-core ARM CPU configuration, with eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, with a maximum frequency of 3.2 GHz.

The first die shot of AMD's new 4 nm "Strix Point" mobile processor surfaced, thanks to an enthusiast on Chinese social media. "Strix Point" is a significantly larger die than "Phoenix." It measures 12.06 mm x 18.71 mm (L x W), compared to the 9.06 mm x 15.01 mm of "Phoenix." Much of this die size increase comes from the larger CPU, iGPU, and NPU. The process has been improved from TSMC N4 on "Phoenix" and its derivative "Hawk Point," to the newer TSMC N4P node.

Nemez (GPUsAreMagic) annotated the die shot in great detail. The CPU now has 12 cores spread across two CCX, one of which contains four "Zen 5" cores sharing a 16 MB L3 cache; and the other with eight "Zen 5c" cores sharing an 8 MB L3 cache. The two CCXs connect to the rest of the chip over Infinity Fabric. The rather large iGPU takes up the central region of the die. It is based on the RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, and features 8 workgroup processors (WGPs), or 16 compute units (CU) worth 1,024 stream processors. Other key components include four render backends worth 16 ROPs, and control logic. The GPU has its own 2 MB of L2 cache that cushions transfers to the Infinity Fabric.

AMD in its architecture deep-dive Q&A session with the press, confirmed that the "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" cores on the "Strix Point" silicon only feature 256-bit wide FPU data-paths, unlike the "Zen 5" cores in the "Granite Ridge" Ryzen 9000 desktop processors. "The Zen 5c used in Strix has a 256-bit data-path, and so does the Zen 5 used inside of Strix," said Mike Clark, AMD corporate fellow and chief architecture of the "Zen" CPU cores. "So there's no delta as you move back and forth [thread migration between the Zen 5 and Zen 5c complexes] in vector throughput," he added.

It doesn't seem like AMD disabled a physically available feature, but rather, the company developed a variant of both the "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" cores that physically lack the 512-bit data-paths. "And you get the area advantage to be able to scale out a little bit more," Clark continued. This suggests that the "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" cores on "Strix Point" are physically smaller than the ones on the 4 nm "Eldora" 8-core CCD that is featured in "Granite Ridge" and some of the key models of the upcoming 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" server processors.

The much-anticipated revolution in AI-powered personal computing seems to be off to a slower start than expected. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs, touted as game-changers in the AI PC market, have struggled to gain significant traction since their launch. Recent data from PassMark, a popular benchmarking software, reveals that Snapdragon X CPUs account for a mere 0.3% of submissions in the past 30 days. This is a massive contrast to the 99.7% share held by traditional x86 processors from Intel and AMD, which raises questions about the immediate future of ARM-based PCs. The underwhelming adoption comes despite bold predictions from industry leaders. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon had projected that ARM-based CPUs could capture up to 50% of the Windows PC market by 2029. Similarly, ARM's CEO anticipated a shift away from x86's long-standing dominance.

However, it turns out that these PCs are primarily bought for the battery life, not their AI capabilities. Of course, it's premature to declare Arm's Windows venture a failure. The AI PC market is still in its infancy, and upcoming mid-tier laptops featuring Snapdragon X Elite CPUs could boost adoption rates. A lot of time still needs to pass before the volume of these PCs reaches millions of units shipped by x86 makers. The true test will come with the launch of AMD's Ryzen AI 300 and Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs, providing a clearer picture of how ARM-based options compare in AI performance. As the AI PC landscape evolves, Qualcomm faces mounting pressure. NVIDIA's anticipated entry into the market and significant performance improvements in next-generation x86 processors from Intel and AMD pose a massive challenge. The coming months will be crucial in determining whether Snapdragon X CPUs can live up to their initial hype and carve out a significant place in the AI PC ecosystem.

AMD is about give the new "Zen 5" microarchitecture a near-simultaneous launch across both its client segments—desktop and mobile. The desktop front is held by the Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" Socket AM5 processors; while Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" powers the company's crucial effort to capture Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC market share. We recently did a technical deep-dive on the two. HardwareLuxx.de scored two important bits of specs for both processors in its Q&A interaction with AMD—die sizes and transistor counts.

To begin with, "Strix Point" is a monolithic silicon, which is confirmed to be built on the TSMC N4P foundry node (4 nm). This is a slight upgrade over the N4 node that the company built its previous generation "Phoenix" and "Hawk Point" processors on. The "Strix Point" silicon measures 232.5 mm² in area, which is significantly larger than the 178 mm² of "Hawk Point" and "Phoenix." The added die area comes from there being 12 CPU cores instead of 8, and 16 iGPU compute units instead of 12; and a larger NPU. There are many other factors, such as the larger 24 MB CPU L3 cache; and the sizes of the "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" cores themselves.

HP Inc. today introduced two new innovations—the world's highest performance AI PC and the first integration of a trust framework into an AI model development platform. Both announcements expand HP's efforts to make AI real for companies and people with new and transformative AI experiences across the company's PCs, software, and partner ecosystem.

HP is empowering everyone, from corporate knowledge workers to freelancers and students, to unlock the power of AI. Users can connect with anyone in the world with real time translation to 40 languages, become master presenters with their personal communication coach, and quickly create videos like a pro.

ASUS has revealed its upcoming ExpertBook P5 laptop, set to debut alongside Intel's highly anticipated "Lunar Lake" processors. This ultrabook aims to boost AI-capable laptop market, featuring an unspecified Intel Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPU at its core. The ExpertBook P5 boasts impressive AI processing capabilities, with over 45 TOPS from its Neural Processing Unit and a combined 100+ TOPS when factoring in the CPU and GPU. The NPU provides efficient processing, with additional power coming from Lunar Lake's GPU with XMX cores, featuring the Xe2 Battlemage architecture. This is more than enough for the Copilot+ certification from Microsoft, making the laptop debut as an "AI PC." The ExpertBook P5 offers up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory running at 8333 MT/s, up to 3 TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage with two drives, and Wi-Fi 7 support.

The 14-inch anti-glare display features a 2.5K resolution and a smooth 144 Hz refresh rate, ensuring a premium visual experience. Despite its powerful internals, the ExpertBook P5 maintains a solid profile weighing just 1.3 kg. The laptop is housed in an all-metal military-grade aluminium body with a 180-degree lay-flat hinge, making it both portable and versatile. ASUS has also prioritized cooling efficiency with innovative technology that optimizes thermal management, whether the laptop is open or closed. Security hasn't been overlooked either, with the ExpertBook P5 featuring a robust security ecosystem, including Windows 11 secured-core PC framework, NIST-155-ready Commercial-Grade BIOS protection, and biometric login options. While an exact release date hasn't been confirmed, ASUS is preparing ExpertBook P5 and other Lunar Lake-powered laptops to hit the market in the second half of 2024.

The PC market gathered momentum in Q2 2024, with worldwide shipments of desktops and notebooks up 3.4% year-on-year, reaching 62.8 million units. Shipments of notebooks (including mobile workstations) hit 50 million units, growing 4%. Desktops (including desktop workstations), which constitute 20% of the total PC market, experienced a slight 1% growth, totaling 12.8 million units. The stage is now set for accelerated growth as the refresh cycle driven by the Windows 11 transition and AI PC adoption ramps up over the next four quarters.

"The PC industry is going from strength to strength with a third consecutive quarter of growth," said Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys. "The market turnaround is coinciding with exciting announcements from vendors and chipset manufacturers as their AI PC roadmaps transition from promise to reality. The quarter culminated with the launch of the first Copilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon processors and more clarity around Apple's AI strategy with the announcement of the Apple Intelligence suite of features for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Beyond these innovations, the market will start to benefit even more from its biggest tailwind - a ramp-up in PC demand driven by the Windows 11 refresh cycle. The vast majority of channel partners surveyed by Canalys in June indicated that Windows 10 end-of-life is likely to impact customer refresh plans most in either the second half of 2024 or the first half of 2025, suggesting that shipment growth will only gather steam in upcoming quarters."

The recent launch of Copilot+ PCs, a collaboration between Microsoft and Qualcomm, has taken an unexpected turn in the market. While these devices were promoted for their artificial intelligence capabilities, a Bloomberg report reveals that consumers are primarily drawn to them for their impressive battery life. The Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ PCs have made a significant impact, securing 20% of global PC sales during their launch week. However, industry analyst Avi Greengart points out that the extended battery life, not the AI features, is driving these sales. Microsoft introduced three AI-powered features exclusive to these PCs: Cocreator, Windows Studio Effects, and Live Captions with Translation. Despite these innovations, many users find these features non-essential for daily use. The delay of the anticipated Recall feature due to privacy concerns has further dampened enthusiasm for the AI aspects of these devices.

The slow reception of on-device AI capabilities extends beyond consumer preferences to the software industry. Major companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and SentinelOne declined Microsoft's request to optimize their apps for the new hardware, citing resource constraints and the limited market share of AI-capable PCs. Gregor Steward, SentinelOne's VP for AI, suggests it could take years before AI PCs are widespread enough to justify app optimization. Analysts project that by 2028, only 40% of new computers will be AI-capable. Despite these challenges, Qualcomm remains optimistic about the future of AI PCs. While the concept may currently be more on the marketing side, the introduction of Arm-based Windows laptops offers a welcome alternative to the Intel-AMD duopoly. As the technology evolves and adoption increases, on-device AI features may become more prevalent and useful. The imminent arrival of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Lunar Lake chips promises to expand the Copilot+ PC space further. For now, however, it appears that superior battery life remains the primary selling point for consumers.

Apparently the AMD "Strix Halo" processor is real, and it's large. The chip is designed to square off against the likes of the Apple M3 Pro and M3 Max, in letting ultraportable notebooks have powerful graphics performance. A chiplet-based processor, not unlike the desktop socketed "Raphael," and mobile BGA "Dragon Range," the "Strix Halo" processor consists of one or two CCDs containing CPU cores, wired to a large die, that's technically the cIOD (client I/O die), but containing an oversized iGPU, and an NPU. The point behind "Strix Halo" is to eliminate the need for a performance-segment discrete GPU, and conserve its PCB footprint.

According to leaks by Harukaze5719, a reliable source with AMD leaks, "Strix Halo" comes in a BGA package dubbed FP11, measuring 37.5 mm x 45 mm, which is significantly larger than the 25 mm x 40 mm size of the FP8 BGA package that the regular "Strix Point," "Hawk Point," and "Phoenix" mobile processors are built on. It is larger in area than the 40 mm x 40 mm FL1 BGA package of "Dragon Range" and upcoming "Fire Range" gaming notebook processors. "Strix Halo" features one or two of the same 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs featured on the "Granite Ridge" desktop and "Fire Range" mobile processors, but connected to a much larger I/O die, as we mentioned.

Just a few weeks ago, AMD invited us to Barcelona as part of a roundtable, to share their vision for the future of the company, and to get our feedback. On site, were prominent AMD leadership, including Phil Guido, Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer and Jack Huynh, Senior VP & GM, Computing and Graphics Business Group. AMD is making changes in a big way to how they are approaching technology, shifting their focus from hardware development to emphasizing software, APIs, and AI experiences. Software is no longer just a complement to hardware; it's the core of modern technological ecosystems, and AMD is finally aligning its strategy accordingly.

The major difference between AMD and NVIDIA is that AMD is a hardware company that makes software on the side to support its hardware; while NVIDIA is a software company that designs hardware on the side to accelerate its software. This is about to change, as AMD is making a pivot toward software. They believe that they now have the full stack of computing hardware—all the way from CPUs, to AI accelerators, to GPUs, to FPGAs, to data-processing and even server architecture. The only frontier left for AMD is software.

ASUS announced a press event on July 17 to launch at least nine notebook designs powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" mobile processors. All these notebooks are AI PCs that meet Microsoft Copilot+ requirements. Each of the 9 designs will have several variants based on the processor model, discrete graphics, and other hardware differentiators, making up dozens of individual SKUs. The AMD "Strix Point" mobile processor is based on a 4 nm monolithic die. It combines a 12-core/24-thread CPU based on a combination of "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" cores, a 50 TOPS-class NPU, and a powerful iGPU based on the RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, with 16 compute units.

Among the notebook designs ASUS plans to announce on July 17 are the ROG Zephyrus G16 (GA605), the TUF Gaming A14 (FA401), the TUF Gaming A16 (FA608), the Zenbook S16 (UM5606), Vivobook S14 (M5406), Vivobook S16 (M5506 and M5606), ProArt P16 (HN7606) and ProArt PX13 (HN7306). With these, ASUS is covering pretty much all its notebook market segments, including enthusiast gaming, performance gaming, boutique ultraportability, mainstream, and creative professional.

During Computex 2024, Intel announced the next-generation compute platform for the notebook segment in the form of the Core Ultra 200V series, codenamed Lunar Lake. Set for release in September 2024, these processors are generating excitement among tech enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. According to the latest leak by VideoCardz, Intel plans to unveil nine variants of Lunar Lake, including Core Ultra 7 and Core Ultra 5 models, with a single high-end Core Ultra 9 variant. While exact specifications remain under wraps, Intel's focus on artificial intelligence capabilities is clear. The company aims to secure a spot in Microsoft's Copilot+ lineup by integrating its fourth-generation Neural Processing Unit (NPU), boasting up to 48 TOPS of performance. All Lunar Lake variants are expected to feature a hybrid architecture with four Lion Cove performance cores and four Skymont efficiency cores.

This design targets low-power mobile devices, striking a balance between performance and energy efficiency. For graphics, Intel is incorporating its next-generation Arc technology, dubbed Battlemage GPU, which utilizes the Xe2-LPG architecture. The leaked information suggests that Lunar Lake processors will come with either 16 GB or 32 GB of non-upgradable LPDDR5-8533 memory. Graphics configurations are expected to include seven or eight Xe2 GPU cores, depending on the model. At the entry level, the Core Ultra 5 226V is rumored to offer a 17 W base power and 30 W maximum turbo power, with performance cores clocking up to 4.5 GHz. The top-tier Core Ultra 9 288V is expected to push the envelope with a 30 W base power, performance cores boosting to 5.1 GHz, and an NPU capable of 48 TOPS. You can check out the rest of the SKUs in the table below.

TSMC has commenced mass-production of chips for Intel on its 3 nm EUV FinFET foundry node, according to a report by Taiwan industry observer DigiTimes. Intel is using the TSMC 3 nm node for the compute tile of its upcoming Core Ultra 300 "Lunar Lake" processor. The company went into depth about "Lunar Lake" in its Computex 2024 presentation. While a disaggregated chiplet-based processor like "Meteor Lake," the new "Lunar Lake" chip sees the CPU cores, iGPU, NPU, and memory controllers sit on a single chiplet called the compute tile, built on the 3 nm node; while the SoC and I/O components are disaggregated the chip's only other chiplet, the SoC tile, which is built on the TSMC 6 nm node.

Intel hasn't gone into the nuts and bolts of "Arrow Lake," besides mentioning that the processor will feature the same "Lion Cove" P-cores and "Skymont" E-cores as "Lunar Lake," albeit arranged in a more familiar ringbus configuration, where the E-core clusters share L3 cache with the P-cores (something that doesn't happen on "Lunar Lake"). "Arrow Lake" also features a iGPU based on the same Xe2 graphics architecture as "Lunar Lake," and will feature an NPU that meets Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC requirements. What remains a mystery about "Arrow Lake" is the way Intel will go about organizing the various chiplets or tiles. Reports from February 2024 mentioned Intel tapping into TSMC 3 nm for just the disaggregated graphics tile of "Arrow Lake," but we now know from "Lunar Lake" that Intel doesn't shy away from letting TSMC fabricate its CPU cores. The first notebooks powered by "Lunar Lake" are expected to hit shelves within Q3-2024, with "Arrow Lake" following on in Q4.

Samsung Electronics today announced the immediate availability of the new Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge in select markets. With next-level AI processing performance and intelligent hybrid AI integrations, the Galaxy Book4 Edge advances the era of AI and introduces users to new levels of seamless work, play and creation on their PC.

"The Galaxy Book4 Edge marks the beginning of a whole new category of PCs, and for Samsung, a continued commitment to expand the power of Galaxy AI and offer the most hyperconnected mobile AI ecosystem yet," said TM Roh, President and Head of the Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. "Developed in close collaboration with our industry partners, we believe this next-generation AI PC will redefine the market and more importantly, give people cutting-edge ways to be more productive and creative in their everyday lives."

Microsoft has made a last-minute decision to pull its much-debated "Recall" feature from the Windows 11 24H2 update set to launch on June 18th. Instead, the company will roll out Recall as a preview through the Windows Insider Program while it works to build user trust and address security concerns. Recall, one of the flagship features of 24H2, creates a searchable 30-day timeline of a user's activities including files, webpages, and screenshots. However, since its announcement on May 20th, Recall has faced heavy criticism over potential privacy risks from storing user data in unencrypted plain text files. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont labeled Recall a "security nightmare" after finding it logged activities to a SQLite database accessible by non-admin accounts. This raised alarms about the depths of user behavior tracked and stored locally on PCs.

Initially, Microsoft had planned for Recall to be enabled by default in 24H2. However, following the backlash, the company backtracked on June 7th, making it an opt-in feature requiring Windows Hello authentication and adding encryption. Those adjustments were still not enough to satisfy Microsoft. In a new blog post, the firm stated Recall did not yet meet its "own standards of quality and security" and that it "must be trustworthy, secure and robust" before a wider rollout. By moving Recall to the Insider Program for further testing and refinement, Microsoft is giving itself more time to get the technology right and rebuild user confidence. A future blog will provide instructions for Insiders to preview Recall on compatible Copilot+ PCs with added security protections.

Arm CEO Rene Haas predicts that SoCs based on the Arm CPU machine architecture will beat x86 in the Windows PC space in the next 5 years (by 2029). Haas is bullish about the current crop of Arm SoCs striking the right balance of performance and power efficiency, along with just the right blend of on-chip acceleration for AI and graphics, to make serious gains in this market, which has traditionally been dominated by the x86 machine architecture, with chips from just two manufacturers—Intel and AMD. On the other hand, Arm has a vibrant ecosystem of SoC vendors. "Arm's market share in Windows - I think, truly, in the next five years, it could be better than 50%." Haas said, in an interview with Reuters.

Currently, Microsoft has an exclusive deal with Qualcomm to power Windows-on-Arm (WoA) Copilot+ AI PCs. Qualcomm's chip lineup spans the Snapdragon Elite X and Snapdragon Elite Plus. This exclusivity, however, could change, with a recent interview of Michael Dell and Jensen Huang hinting at NVIDIA working on a chip for the AI PC market. The writing is on the wall for Intel and AMD—they need to compete with Arm on its terms: to make leaner PC processors with the kinds of performance/Watt and chip costs that Arm SoCs offer to PC OEMs. Intel has taken a big step in this direction with its "Lunar Lake" processor, you can read all about the architecture here.

At Computex 2024, ASUS unveiled major updates to its popular laptop lineups, designed for the "Copilot+" era of AI computing. The first is the Zenbook S16 is a premium 16-inch laptop series powered by AMD's latest Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processors with dedicated AI acceleration. Remarkably, ASUS has managed to pack this high-performance silicon into an ultra-portable 1.1 cm thin chassis weighing just 1.5 kg. The Zenbook S16 integrates AMD's new NPU capable of a 50 TOPS of AI compute for accelerating AI/ML workloads. The centerpiece is the laptop's stunning 16-inch 3K OLED display made with ASUS Lumina technology. It offers 100% vibrant DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, a blazing-fast 120 Hz refresh rate with 0.2 ms response time, and up to 600 nits brightness. ASUS paired this premium visual experience with a six-speaker audio system for an immersive multimedia experience.

AMD today launched its Ryzen AI 300 series mobile processors, codenamed "Strix Point." These chips implement a combination of the AMD "Zen 5" microarchitecture for the CPU cores, the XDNA 2 architecture for its powerful new NPU, and the RDNA 3+ graphics architecture for its 33% faster iGPU. The new "Zen 5" microarchitecture provides a 16% generational IPC uplift over "Zen 4" on the backs of several front-end enhancements, wider execution pipelines, more intra core bandwidth, and a revamped FPU that doubles performance of AI and AVX-512 workloads. AMD didn't go in-depth with the microarchitecture, but the broad points of "Zen 5" are detailed in our article for the Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processors. Not only is AMD using these faster "Zen 5" CPU cores, but also increased the CPU core count by 50%, for a maximum of 12-core/24-thread.

The "Strix Point" monolithic silicon is built on the 4 nm foundry node, and packs a CPU core complex (CCX) with 12 CPU cores, four of these are "Zen 5," which can achieve the highest possible boost frequencies, the other eight are "Zen 5c" cores that feature an identical IPC and the full ISA, including support for SMT; but don't boost as high as the "Zen 5" cores. AMD is claiming a productivity performance increase ranging between 4% and 73% for its top model based in the series, when compared to Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" processor. The iGPU sees its compute unit (CU) count go all the way up to 16 from 12 in the previous generation, and this yields a claimed 33% increase in iGPU gaming performance compared to the integrated Arc graphics of the Core Ultra 9 185H. Lastly, the XDNA 2 NPU sees more that triple the AI inference performance to 50 AI TOPS, compared to the 16 TOPS of the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" processor, and 12 TOPS of Core Ultra "Meteor Lake." This makes the processor meet Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC requirements.

Last week, we got confirmation from the highest levels of Dell and NVIDIA that the latter is making a client PC processor for the Windows on Arm (WoA) AI PC ecosystem that only has one player in it currently, Qualcomm. Michael Dell hinted that this NVIDIA AI PC processor would be ready in 2025. Since then, speculation has been rife about the various IP blocks NVIDIA could use in the development of this chip, the two key areas of debate have been the CPU cores and the process node.

Given that NVIDIA is gunning toward a 2025 launch of its AI PC processor, the company could implement reference Arm IP CPU cores, such as the Arm Cortex X5 "Blackhawk," and not venture out toward developing its own CPU cores on the Arm machine architecture, unlike Apple. Depending on how the market recieves its chips, NVIDIA could eventually develop its own cores. Next up, the company could use the most advanced 3 nm-class foundry node available in 2025 for its chip, such as the TSMC N3P. Given that even Apple and Qualcomm will build their contemporary notebook chips on this node, it would be a logical choice of node for NVIDIA. Then there's graphics and AI acceleration hardware.

NVIDIA is eying a comeback to the client processor business, reveals a Bloomberg interview with the CEOs of NVIDIA and Dell. For NVIDIA, all it takes is a simple driver update that exposes every GeForce GPU with tensor cores as an NPU to Windows 11, with translation layers to get popular client AI apps to work with TensorRT. But that would need you to have a discrete NVIDIA GPU. What about the vast market of Windows AI PCs powered by the likes of Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD, who each sell 15 W-class processors with integrated NPUs capable of 50 AI TOPS, which is all that Copilot+ needs? NVIDIA held an Arm license for decades now, and makes Arm-based CPUs to this day, with the NVIDIA Grace, however, that is a large server processor meant for its AI GPU servers.

NVIDIA already made client processors under the Tegra brand targeting smartphones, which it winded down last decade. It's since been making Drive PX processors for its automotive self-driving hardware division; and of course there's Grace. NVIDIA hinted that it might have a client CPU for the AI PC market in 2025. In the interview Bloomberg asked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang a pointed question on whether NVIDIA has a place in the AI PC market. Dell CEO Michael Dell, who was also in the interview, interjected "come back next year," to which Jensen affirmed "exactly." Dell would be in a front-and-center position to know if NVIDIA is working on a new PC processor for launch in 2025, and Jensen's nod almost confirms this

Microsoft Auto Super Resolution (ASR), the standardized game super-resolution based performance enhancement, is initially only being offered to Copilot+ AI PCs powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors, says the Microsoft FAQ for Copilot+ AI PCs. "At initial launch, this feature will be exclusive to Copilot+ PCs equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor and a curated set of games that can be found here, a third-party open-source site that Microsoft has contributed compatibility data to," the FAQ answer reads, in response to the question "What is automatic super resolution?"

The way we understand this, Microsoft ASR will be launched initially only Windows Arm devices, specifically those powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. The Snapdragon X Plus is excluded; but more importantly, all x86-64 platforms (Intel or AMD) are excluded from the initial rollout. This doesn't mean that ASR won't make it to x86, it just will at a later date. Copilot+ devices based on the Snapdragon X Elite tend to have a high degree of design collaboration between the OEM and Microsoft, and Redmond wants to use them as tech demonstrators, mostly since these platforms lack the usual super resolution tech such as AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, or NVIDIA DLSS. It's important to note that ASR is a super-resolution tech that's not meant to be confused with DirectSR, the API it's based on. Development of DirectSR for Windows PCs on x86-64 platforms continues.