34 01732 759725 AI PCs are bringing new impetus to the PC industry, but as Brandon Lieberthal, VP PC and Printing Systems, Europe at TD SYNNEX, explains to James Goulding, the PC is just one part of a total AI solution. Here are four of his key observations about these ground-breaking machines would probably disagree with that: one, because they are not going to put a Copilot button on their machine; and, two, because they've had neural processing units on their machines for some time without calling them AI.” w AI is all about the solution “AI is all about the solution. You can buy the fastest PC with the highest TOPS count, but until you have an AI app to go with it, it’s just like the PCs we sold before. It's all about having the applications to provide a use case, and so far there are two names that people recognise. “The first one, which woke us up to AI, is ChatGPT. That's a web-based application. We know there are security risks and data risks around what you type into ChatGPT because you're sharing what you want with an external person, which brings you to the edge concept. How do you take the power of the cloud and bring it safely onto the edge device so you don't need to share everything with everyone? “You do that with Copilot. And you've got two versions. You've got Copilot, available on every Windows 11 machine now coming out, giving functionality similar to what people use ChatGPT for. That's the cloud-based offering. Then you have Copilot for Microsoft 365, with subscriptionbased enterprise licensing, which is where you will experience the benefits of the machine and the ability to do a lot of computations on the edge.” Lieberthal adds that the number one benefit of an AI PC is productivity. “Tools such as Copilot give a huge amount of productivity and allow people to become multiskilled. For example, before, if you wanted to do copy or imagery work, you would have to go to multiple people, which impacted productivity. Now you could potentially get Copilot to do it for you. “Almost every person will have an AI assistant. We call it a personal computer and it really will become very personal. It will learn about you and get used to how you speak and how you think, to the point where it'll start to answer emails and write a response for you. You'll just say I agree or I don't. “We'll also get more used to collaborating between tools and apps. I always explain Copilot in terms of its ability to transform the way we work, really integrating all of the capabilities of AI into the things we do daily. “CIOs will need to think about the model they want. Do you invest in the machine, for example if security is a big driver for you or if you're a data scientist and you need huge computing power? In certain areas, do you replace q The neural processing unit makes the difference “From a hardware perspective, the single biggest difference between an AI and non-AI PC is that an AI PC must have a neural processing unit (NPU) in the processor. NPU speed in measured in TOPS (trillions of operations per second) and Microsoft recently announced the Copilot+ PC powered by Qualcomm, the first so called next generation AI PC with a speed greater than 40 TOPS. In its most simple form, the NPU is what differentiates an AI PC from a nonAI PC,” explains Lieberthal. He adds that while all vendors can agree on the requirement for an NPU, beyond that there will inevitably be argument, discussion and debate. “Different vendors with different strategies may disagree on the terminology. Microsoft might say their view of an AI PC is that you have Windows 11, you have a Copilot button and you have a neural processing unit. Apple AI PCs to the rescue Brandon Lieberethal PCS HP’s latest ultramobile AI PCs, the HP OmniBook X and HP EliteBook Ultra, run AI locally on the device for maximum performance, efficiency and privacy, supported by a recordbreaking 26 hours of battery life.
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