Technologies

Intel’s Next PC Chip, Meteor Lake, Will Speed Up AI Later This Year

The new processor is key to the chipmaker’s recovery plans and competing against Apple’s M series of Mac processors.

Today’s most glamorous, attention-getting AI tools — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, Google’s Bard and Adobe’s Photoshop, for example — run in data centers stuffed with powerful, expensive servers. But Intel on Monday revealed details of its forthcoming Meteor Lake PC processor that could help your laptop play more of a part in the artificial intelligence revolution.

Meteor Lake, scheduled to ship in computers later this year, includes circuitry that accelerates some AI tasks that otherwise might sap your battery. For example, it can improve AI that recognizes you to blur or replace backgrounds better during videoconferences, said John Rayfield, leader of Intel’s client AI work.

AI models use methods inspired by human brains to recognize patterns in complex, real-world data. By running AI on a laptop or phone processor instead of in the cloud, you can get benefits like better privacy and security as well as a snappier response since you don’t have network delays.

What’s unclear is how much AI work will really move from the cloud to PCs. Some software, like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, use AI extensively for finding people, skies and other subject matter in photos and many other image editing tasks. Apps can recognize your voice and transcribe it into text. Microsoft is building an AI chatbot called Windows Copilot straight into its operating system. But most computing work today exercises more traditional parts of a processor, its central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) cores.

There’s a build-it-and-they-will come possibility. Adding AI acceleration directly into the chip, as has already happened with smartphone processors and Apple M-series Mac processors, could encourage developers to write more software drawing on AI abilities.

GPUs are already pretty good for accelerating AI, though, and developers don’t have to wait for millions of us to upgrade our Windows PCs to take advantage of it. The GPU offers top AI performance on a PC, but the new AI-specific accelerator is good for low power, Rayfield said. Both can be used simultaneously for top performance, too.

Meteor Lake a key chip for Intel

Meteor Lake is important for other reasons, too. It’s designed for lower power operations, arguably the single biggest competitive weakness compared with the Apple M-series processors. It’s got upgraded graphics acceleration, which is critical for gaming and important for some AI tasks, too.

The processor also is key to Intel’s yearslong turnaround effort. It’s the first big chip to be built with Intel 4, a new manufacturing process essential to catching up with chipmaking leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung. And it employs new advanced manufacturing technology called Foveros that lets Intel stack multiple «chiplets» more flexibly and economically into a single more powerful processor.

Chipmakers are racing to tap into the AI revolution, few as successfully as Nvidia, which earlier in May reported a blowout quarter thanks to exploding demand for its highest-end AI chips. Intel sells data center AI chips, too, but has more of a focus on economy than performance.

In its PC processors, Intel calls its AI accelerator a vision processing unit, or VPU, a product family and name that stems from its 2016 acquisition of AI chipmaker Movidius.

These days, a variation called generative AI can create realistic imagery and human-sounding text. Although Meteor Lake can run one such image generator, Stable Diffusion, large AI language models like ChatGPT simply don’t fit on a laptop.

There’s a lot of work to change that, though. Facebook’s LLaMA and Google’s PaLM 2 both are large language models designed to scale down to smaller «client» devices like PCs and even phones with much less memory.

«AI in the cloud … has challenges with latency, privacy, security, and it’s fundamentally expensive,» Rayfield said. «Over time, as we can improve compute efficiency, more of this is migrating to the client.»

Technologies

Your Microsoft Passwords Will Vanish in a Few Hours. What to Do Right Now

Microsoft’s go-to password manager won’t be the same after Aug. 1.

It’s time to say so long to the Microsoft Authenticator app as we know it.

As of this Friday, Aug. 1, the app will no longer save or manage passwords, use two-factor authentication or auto-fill. And it won’t be your go-to password manager anymore, either. Instead of passwords, Microsoft is moving to passkeys — such as PINs, fingerprint scans, facial recognition or a pattern on your device’s lock screen.

Using passkeys is a safer alternative to the risky password habits 49% of US adults use, according to CNET’s password survey. However, Attila Tomaschek, a CNET software senior writer and digital security expert, prefers Microsoft’s new login over password habits that can risk your data being stolen.

There’s not much time to learn about passkeys or password manager, but we’re here to help. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Microsoft Authenticator will stop supporting passwords on Aug. 1

Microsoft Authenticator houses your passwords and lets you sign into all your Microsoft accounts using a PIN, facial recognition like Windows Hello or other biometric data like a fingerprint. Authenticator can be used in other ways, such as verifying you’re logging in if you forgot your password, or using two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your accounts. In June, the company stopped letting users add passwords to Authenticator.

As of this month, you won’t be able to use the autofill password function. And starting Aug. 1, you’ll no longer be able to use saved passwords.

If you still want to use passwords instead of passkeys, you can store them in Microsoft Edge. However, CNET experts recommend adopting passkeys during this transition. «Passkeys use public key cryptography to authenticate users, rather than relying on users themselves creating their own (often weak or reused) passwords to access their online accounts,» Tomaschek said.

Why passkeys are a better alternative to passwords

So what exactly is a passkey? It’s a credential created by the Fast Identity Online Alliance that uses biometric data or a PIN to verify your identity and access your account. Think about using your fingerprint or Face ID to log into your account. That’s generally safer than using a password that is easy to guess or susceptible to a phishing attack.

«Passwords can be cracked, whereas passkeys need both the public and the locally stored private key to authenticate users, which can help mitigate risks like falling victim to phishing and brute-force or credential-stuffing attacks,» said Tomaschek.

Passkeys aren’t stored on servers like passwords. Instead, they’re stored only on your personal device. More conveniently, this takes the guesswork out of remembering your passwords and the need for a password manager.

How to set up a passkey in Microsoft Authenticator

Microsoft said in a May 1 blog post that it will automatically detect the best passkey to set up and make that your default sign-in option. «If you have a password and ‘one-time code’ set up on your account, we’ll prompt you to sign in with your one-time code instead of your password. After you’re signed in, you’ll be prompted to enroll a passkey. Then the next time you sign in, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your passkey,» according to the blog post.

To set up a new passkey, open your Authenticator app on your phone. Tap on your account and select «Set up a passkey.» You’ll be prompted to log in with your existing credentials. After you’re logged in, you can set up the passkey.

Other password manager alternatives

Since Microsoft will get rid of all of your passwords in two weeks, you’ll need a new place to store your passwords safely. Tomaschek has a few of the best password manager recommendations after testing and reviewing several.

The top recommendation is Bitwarden for its transparency. It’s open-source and audited annually. From a price perspective, the free plan lets you store infinite passwords across unlimited devices. The free plan also includes features most password managers would charge for, including password sharing and a username and password generator.

Bitwarden’s upgraded plans have other upgraded features that could be worth the cost, too.

Personally, Tomaschek has been using 1Password for a while, and he likes the interface and family plan. Even though it’s second on the list, Tomaschek says it’s just as good as Bitwarden.

Technologies

Zelda Spinoff Age of Imprisonment Unravels Secrets Behind the Imprisoning War

The hack-and-slash Nintendo Switch game expands on the lore of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

A new trailer for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was shown at the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase on Thursday — the first look we’ve had since its debut when the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled in April.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment will take place far in the past to explain the events leading to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The video features Princess Zelda, King Rauru and other characters from the game, and it teases a mystery revolving around an animated suit of armor that could be used by Link.

The Hyrule Warriors series is a crossover developed by Koei Tecmo and published by Nintendo. The spinoff started back in 2014 and was a mash-up between Koei Tecmo’s popular Dynasty Warriors franchise, featuring Zelda characters with hack-and-slash gameplay. Unlike in the Zelda games, where the action is limited to a few enemies at a time, Hyrule Warriors has playable characters such as Zelda and Link fighting off waves of enemies at once, doing long combos and fighting giant monsters.

The last installment of the spinoff series, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, came out in 2020 and acted as a prologue for the events of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Age of Imprisonment dives deep into the history of Hyrule and takes place during the Imprisoning War, a battle referenced in Tears of the Kingdom. The war was against an enemy known as the Demon King and involved the ancient Zonai race.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is set to release sometime this winter for the Switch 2.

Technologies

Octopath Traveler 0 Isn’t Just a Prequel, It’s a Whole New Approach

The next installment of the popular Nintendo Switch game lets you customize who the hero will be.

The Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase on Thursday showed trailers for some games already announced for the Nintendo Switch 2 and revealed a few new ones as well. The biggest of those debut games is the third game in the Octopath Traveler series, Octopath Traveler 0.

As the «0» implies, this game is a prequel to the first Octopath Traveler game, released on the original Switch in 2019. This turn-based RPG makes a big change to the series by allowing players to make their own protagonist instead of picking a character to play. As the hero, players will have to rebuild their hometown and fight powerful enemies with the help of more than 30 recruitable characters.

The Octopath Traveler series has a key feature of having eight playable characters. Each character starts from a different part of the world of Osterra and has their own unique job with abilities, and their story arc plays out and eventually meets up with the other heroes. Another trademark of the franchise is its HD-2D graphics and the Break and Boost battle system. In battles, players have their own Boost points that can be used to quickly Break a character, so they can become unable to fight or can be saved to unleash more damage on enemies who get broken during regular attacks. The result is surprisingly fast combat.

This new entry in the series isn’t the only prequel for the franchise. In 2022, Square Enix released a free-to-play gacha game for Android and iOS called Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent. That game was a prequel to the first Octopath game, so it’s unclear how Octopath Traveler 0 will fit into the timeline.

Octopath Traveler 0 will come out on Dec. 4 for the Switch and Switch 2.