Computex 2024: Copilot+ PCs, Qualcomm, and Apple Push Intel and AMD to Innovate; Microsoft to Secure Recall

Computex is an annual trade show held in Taipei. As you might expect based on the venue, Computex is often heavy on Taiwanese chip and laptop news. Computex can be overshadowed by other events like CES or individual vendor events, but this year the venue and timing converged to create a perfect storm of AI, software, and silicon. The CEOs of Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and MediaTek each gave keynotes. Most of them featured Microsoft’s Satya Nadella piped in on video wearing the same outfit, suggesting either that Satya picked up Steve Jobs’ uniform ethos, or he filmed them all back-to-back.

The one company not at Computex – but very much using up most of Taiwanese TSMC’s latest process nodes – was Apple. Apple recently launched its latest M4 processor with its own event for the iPad (event coverage here; iPad Pro review here).

Qualcomm and Copilot+ PCs

Apple Silicon’s shadow falls over the entire computing landscape. To compete, Microsoft has turned to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform and a slew of AI features integrated into a new “Copilot+ PC” version of Windows. The Snapdragon X Elite has custom Arm-based architecture for performance-per-watt claims that equal or exceed Apple’s base M3 (the silicon that powers the best-selling MacBook Air). Snapdragon X Elite is also the first silicon platform with an NPU powerful enough to run Recall and Microsoft’s other AI search, creativity, and productivity -enhancing features. Windows on Arm has been tried before, but it looks different now thanks to the strong performance of Qualcomm’s Oryn CPU cores, more native Windows-on-Arm apps, and improved Prism x86 software emulation. As a result, Microsoft and Qualcomm have now rounded up every major Windows laptop brand to make Snapdragon-based Copilot+ PC laptops (full coverage of Microsoft’s event here).

Rethinking Recall

The flagship feature of Copilot+ PCs is Recall, which uses AI to create a visual record of everything you do on your PC and then have AI find anything you’ve seen or worked on. As Computex concluded, Microsoft reacted to security concerns about early builds of the software with planned changes in time for the June 18 availability date. Recall will no longer be enabled by default, and the Recall archives will be encrypted on the fly and require proof of presence to access. This should both reduce the ability of hackers to grab the Recall archives and make it easier for consumers to decide whether they want Recall when they set up their PC. (Enterprises were always going to decide for their employees with a custom image; Recall was never really going to be on by default on corporate systems.)

Qualcomm’s Computex keynote focused on Snapdragon X Elite’s strong performance-per-watt benchmarks – with most of the comparisons aimed at Apple. Qualcomm also had a parade of OEM CEOs who are all, “excited to be partnering with Qualcomm and Microsoft” and pose for a handshake and a plug for their Copilot+ PC. Finally, Qualcomm highlighted that over 2,000 developers are using its AI Hub to download and use AI models pre-optimized for Snapdragon X Elite and Plus PCs.

Intel and AMD Are Taking Qualcomm (and Arm, and Apple) Seriously Now

The big news at Computex was that Intel and AMD are now taking Qualcomm and Windows-on-Arm seriously – and not just by adding more horsepower to their NPUs, though they certainly did that too. Both companies showed off silicon with NPUs that have least the 40 TOPS of performance Microsoft requires for Copilot+ PCs. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X has 45 TOPs, Intel is claiming Lunar Lake hits 48 TOPS, while AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 goes even further with 50 TOPS. The larger NPUs mean that after a wave of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus laptops hit the market this month from Qualcomm’s newly expanded set of licensees, new Copilot+ PCs from Intel and AMD will be arriving this fall. I expect that many of these devices will be announced at this year’s IFA, which should make the centennial IFA significantly more exciting than last year.

Intel not only embiggened its NPU to hit the necessary Copilot+ PC numbers, it made significant architectural changes elsewhere to improve performance and efficiency. For starters, Intel is including system memory on the processor die – similar to the approach Apple took with Apple Silicon – that reduces memory power requirements by 40%. (This also limits the number of configurations that can be ordered to two: 16GB or 32GB.) Intel’s new compute tile contains new Efficient-cores (E-cores) and Performance-cores (P-cores), and the idea is that much of the time the more powerful E-cores can actually handle the entire load without the P-cores spinning up at all. All these changes can bring up to 60% better battery life (again, compared to prior Intel processors, not Qualcomm or Apple). The Compute tile also houses a new Xe2 GPU that is 50% more powerful than before. Intel is going to push the gaming narrative versus Qualcomm, and this could be a story that lands.

OEMs are on board; Lunar Lake will power more than 80 new AI PC designs from more than 20 partners – though a lot of these are white label boxes. While most of Intel’s comparisons were to older Intel chips, it is gratifying to see the company make enormous strides on power management and performance. It remains to be seen whether it is enough to keep up with Qualcomm, but the bigger concern is that the CPU tiles are being fabbed by TSMC. Intel is doing all the sophisticated packaging itself, but Intel’s key advantage is manufacturing availability and the marketing dollars that flow from its volume. If TSMC becomes a bottleneck or prevents Intel from providing the market with the capacity OEMs need, it risks having a more competitive product, but one that isn’t able to sell competitively.

AMD has its own upgraded chips for Copilot+ PCs, which it is calling Ryzen AI 300. This update to Ryzen 9 is based on all of AMD’s latest architectures: Zen 5 for the CPU, XDNA2 for the NPU, and RDNA 3.5 for the 16 compute-unit GPU. AMD specifically went after Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, claiming that it outperforms it across the board. This may be true – nobody is sharing real numbers yet, and Techsponential hasn’t been able to do any hands-on benchmarking. However, the one spec that AMD did not discuss is efficiency: it has always been possible to get spectacular performance as long as you don’t have to worry about power or thermals. My Lenovo Legion Tower 7i with an Intel Core i9, NVIDIA RTX4080, 900 watt power supply, and water cooling system runs rings around my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro – but it isn’t portable and if it had a battery it would be depleted in minutes unless that battery was a Tesla Powerwall. The argument that Apple and now Qualcomm is making is that consumers want high-end notebook capability, unplugged, for 18 hours at a time. I’m eager to get hands on with AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 in the real world and see how it performs on that basis. It shouldn’t be too long a wait: AMD has design wins from Asus, HP, MSI, Asus, and Lenovo with models starting to ship in July.

AMD also announced extremely powerful Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors with clock speeds up to 5.7 GHz and caches up to 80 MB, that AMD is calling simply, “the fastest consumer desktop processor.” This looks like a killer system for gaming or content rendering. However, this architecture lacks an NPU, so we will be entering a weird period where you can buy a screaming fast desktop that runs games at the highest frame rates and handles the most complex engineering files, but is not a Copilot+ PC – even if you could offload some of Microsoft’s AI tasks to the GPU. 

One sour note from Computex: none of the new silicon includes cellular connectivity by default. Snapdragon X obviously plays nicely with Qualcomm modems and RF systems, but at launch only Lenovo is including it on its Copilot+ PC ThinkPad, and Microsoft will have a cellular Surface Pro later this year. MediaTek provides modem modules to OEMs for their existing x86 designs, so there may be some models with MediaTek 5G …but probably not many. Hey, if Apple doesn’t offer integrated cellular on MacBooks, why would the Windows ecosystem want to have a differentiating feature?

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