Wild Infant

Yesterday, Intel made an exciting announcement regarding their latest PC chips. These chips have already been incorporated into 230 PC models, some of which are already available in stores. One of the standout features of Intel's top-of-the-range PC chip, the Core Ultra 7 165H chip, is its impressive 11% improvement in multi-threading performance compared to competitors such as the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, and Apple M3. Additionally, this chip boasts a 25% reduction in power consumption compared to the Intel Core i7-1370P and a staggering 79% lower power consumption than AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U, all within the same 28W envelope.

What sets these new CPUs apart is the inclusion of an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that delivers low-power AI acceleration. This NPU, along with CPU/GPU off-load capabilities, allows the chips to perform AI-powered tasks such as background blur, eye tracking, and picture framing. Intel claims that their Core Ultra chips can achieve up to 34 TeraOPS when combining performance across the NPU, GPU, and CPU. This advancement in AI capabilities will make AI services more affordable, faster, and more private than relying on cloud data centers, according to Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger.

Gelsinger stated, "That will be the star of the show in this coming year. You're unleashing this power for every person, every use case, every location in the future."

While accelerator ICs have been driving the industry in terms of training AI models, Gelsinger emphasizes that companies will be more concerned with running completed programs. This can be efficiently done using data center and PC chips. Gelsinger argues that AI will be handled by PCs and other devices due to the high costs associated with data centers. He stated, "A few people create models — lots of people use them."

In addition to the PC chips, Intel also introduced their third top-of-the-range Xeon chip in just one year. The year 2023 began with the 3rd generation Xeon chip and ended with the 5th. The latest Xeon chip, No.5, boasts an impressive 64 cores, 8-channel DDR5-5600 memory, and UPI speeds of up to 20GT/s for faster CPU-to-CPU communication.

Looking ahead, Intel has plans to release the Gaudi 3 accelerator IC next year, which will compete with Nvidia's current offerings. Gelsinger expressed his confidence in Intel's progress, stating, "We're going to do a decade of semiconductor work in four years. That's pretty crazy. We're on track, baby."