Who does AI PC better
Lost amid today’s hoopla over a pair of brand-new M3 MacBook Air laptops was a none-too-subtle shift in product messaging that may mark Apple’s official entry into the race to build an AI PC.
In the press release on the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air ultraportables featuring the newest Apple silicon were two paragraphs devoted to claiming the MacBook Air is the « World’s Best Consumer Laptop for AI ». Now, if you weren’t tracking the computer industry as I do, you might’ve just chalked that up to some oddly specific boasting or hyperbole on Apple’s part. I see it a little differently though.
First, a little history. Up until 2020, virtually all new Apple Macs, including MacBook Airs ran Intel CPUs. That year, Apple announced its intention to build its own chips and ultimately replace all Intel CPUs, with its bespoke system on a chip (SoC) that came to be known as Apple Silicon. The first such chip – the M1 – arrived on the much-loved MacBook Air M1 (now discontinued).The march of silicon
Apple eventually made good on its promise and through multiple iterations and upgrades, it finally replaced all Intel silicon with its own. Intel still owns most of the world of Windows PCs, but in some ways, Apple is seen as the system innovator, creating SoCs that run faster and more efficiently than anything Intel can produce.
Intel’s big plan for countering that perception, and exciting people who are looking for other ARM-based solutions that can run Windows as fast and efficiently as something like Apple silicon could, is to revise its whole chip lineup with Intel Core Ultra processors and, more importantly, the « AI PC. »
The AI part comes from the Neural Processing Unit or NPU that will pair with Intel Core Ultras as a sort of AI coprocessor.
