Qualcomm unveils faster AI-powered chip for Windows laptops than Apple’s Mac in select tasks

Qualcomm detailed a chip for Microsoft Windows-based laptops on Tuesday, mentioning its superiority in certain tasks over Apple’s Mac computer chips, as per Reuters. Qualcomm executives highlighted the enhanced capabilities of the forthcoming Snapdragon Elite X chip, slated for release next year. 

Reportedly, this chip has undergone a redesign to optimize its performance in artificial intelligence tasks such as email summarization, text generation, and image rendering.

The AI capabilities will also be integrated into Qualcomm’s smartphone chips, as both Alphabet’s Google and Meta expressed their intentions to leverage these advancements on Tuesday, as per the agency.

This revelation follows a recent Reuters report indicating that Microsoft has urged Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to develop new chips capable of accommodating a range of innovative AI features in Windows, the world’s most widely used PC operating system.

During a video presentation at Qualcomm’s event, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, mentioned that these chips would facilitate the emergence of a fresh era of “AI PCs” tailored for both business and consumer use.

Nadella emphasized that their collaborative efforts would combine experiences that were previously unattainable due to the need for a novel system architecture.

Reportedly, Qualcomm asserted that its X Elite chip outpaces Apple’s M2 Max chip in certain tasks and exhibits superior energy efficiency when compared to both Apple and Intel PC chips. What stands out as the most significant feature, as emphasized by Qualcomm Senior Vice President Alex Katouzian, is the chip’s capability to effectively process artificial intelligence models boasting 13 billion parameters. This parameter count serves as a proxy metric for assessing the sophistication of AI systems responsible for generating text or images.

According to Francis Sideco, an analyst at TIRIAS Research, the introduction of AI-powered image generation by companies like Adobe, spanning applications from real estate brochures to beer can labels, is expected to drive an increase in the demand for laptops equipped with AI capabilities.

“You’ve got a lot of smaller businesses and individual designers and creators using these devices. They need that kind of capability,” said Sideco.

(With inputs from Reuters)

 

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Updated: 25 Oct 2023, 10:59 AM IST