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

Verum Messenger: Don’t follow the future. Define it

In a world where information defines influence, Verum Messenger is building a new architecture of digital communication — intelligent, secure, and ready for tomorrow. Here, technology serves not limitations, but possibilities.

Not being part of change. Leading it. Verum Messenger — the future that speaks first.

Technologies

Verum Finance: Stop Spending Months Opening a Bank Account

Stop spending months trying to open a bank account.

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The future of finance and communication is already here.
Verum — when freedom matters more than banking rules.

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal