When a wave of ARM powered Windows laptops, and now a few desktops launched, they were all Copilot+ for whatever reason. They all marketed the NPU, but struggled to really say what the NPU unlocked that you couldn’t do with a CPU or GPU. Other marketing gimmicks were a better background blur and an AI drawing assistant in I think paint. I think you could also do “AI stuff” in photos, but don’t think that was local.
Honestly, I think everyone missed the punchline on ARM. The promise is lower heat and greater battery life. There was no need to bundle that with AI gimmicks. But clearly a PM thought so and now they’re trying to save face. Really taking advantage of ARM and pushing for battery life, by optimizing the kernal and changing what happens in standby, would probably be a bigger engineering lift.
/Thoughts from a rando who bought an ARM powered Windows laptop and generally likes it but has never touched the NPU enabled stuff
Recall was the headline feature for Copilot+ PCs.
When a wave of ARM powered Windows laptops, and now a few desktops launched, they were all Copilot+ for whatever reason. They all marketed the NPU, but struggled to really say what the NPU unlocked that you couldn’t do with a CPU or GPU. Other marketing gimmicks were a better background blur and an AI drawing assistant in I think paint. I think you could also do “AI stuff” in photos, but don’t think that was local.
Honestly, I think everyone missed the punchline on ARM. The promise is lower heat and greater battery life. There was no need to bundle that with AI gimmicks. But clearly a PM thought so and now they’re trying to save face. Really taking advantage of ARM and pushing for battery life, by optimizing the kernal and changing what happens in standby, would probably be a bigger engineering lift.
/Thoughts from a rando who bought an ARM powered Windows laptop and generally likes it but has never touched the NPU enabled stuff