Read from semiaccurate:
Qualcomm’s new AI/Copilot PCs has overwhelming hype but their actions point to a far murkier picture. SemiAccurate really wanted to like this ‘new’ category but we now are convinced that the reality is nowhere near what the shills will tell you.
Words vs Deeds:
Lets start out with a simple fact of product launches, when you have a good product, get it out there to everyone as early as possible. When you have a bad one, make sure no one can independently test it and therefor contradict your rosy messaging with hard facts. Qualcomm and Microsoft have gone far above and beyond the call of duty to make sure independent reviews of their new SoC in the AI/Copilot PCs can’t happen. This isn’t by chance.
We could regale with stories of launches past where companies intentionally broke parts of press samples they knew would not compare well vs the competition but we won’t. To be fair, Qualcomm didn’t do anything like this, physically, they just made sure no one could test what they wanted on their hardware at press events and no one could get samples in time for real testing.
Some people may have been offered samples to cover for the behavior but they were said to arrive a few days before the on sale date. This is akin to breaking ports in the sense that you have plausible deniability when comprehensive testing can’t be done. In any case Qualcomm and Microsoft have a lot to hide and to be fair, they hid it quite well. We know the official excuses but, well, they simply don’t add up.
Behind the Curtain:
What is Qualcomm hiding and why? Lets start out with the why side, it is easier. The x86 emulation sucks and they know it. Since x86 compatibility is a key marketing message from both players, they want you to believe your software will just run, they have to hide this failing at all costs. Let me split a hair here, the silicon is actually quite good on the x86 emulation front, the team didn’t forget everything they did at Apple but coupled with Windows it, well, ends up sucking. Actually that is a bit unfair, lets just say the end user device sucks and not apportion blame to any one part.
When questioned, Qualcomm spokespeople will fall back to to a talking point about apps that they have tweaked/validated/worked on and those run fine, fast-ish, and without hiccups. This is true but that list is mighty short and chances you have a few apps that will blow up. Games, well, again they go back to casual games running fine which they probably do. Real games don’t and most non-tweaked games don’t either, casual or not. Qualcomm knows this and they are desperate to hide it.
AI PCs Aren’t Intelligent:
Lets move on to the elephant in the room, AI PCs, we will stop using Copilot because it is getting annoying. This is Microsoft’s latest attempt at branding and is distinct from Intel’s AI PC branding and AMD’s Ryzen AI/AI PC branding. For this we will focus on Microsoft’s version which we exclusively told you about here. The TLDR version is that if your CPU has 45TOPS in it’s NPU you get the sticker. And the slush funds, lots and lots of slush funds.
How much? If you play ball like Lenovo purportedly is it means a 50% discount on Windows to start with. You will have to stand up on stage and dance for Microsoft but the cash is about as massive a kickback as SemiAccurate can recall. The money hose is on full blast this time but why? What everyone is calling AI this time around is simply not.
It isn’t powerful enough to make a difference over the TOPS available in the CPU and GPU but it will save a _LITTLE_ energy every so often. The cooked up scenarios shown off over the last few days are perfectly doable with current PCs, just with a little more battery drain. The bunny ears you put on your boss during that endless conference call may be a little more realistic with an AI PC but, well, refresh the corporate fleet NOW! AI PCs have little to no actual advantage over current silicon and that will be the case for a long time to come.
So if this stuff is pretty worthless for the short and mid-term due to lack of performance and lack of apps, why is Microsoft so desperate to push it? Simple enough, money. Microsoft is pimping AI features hard, and in some cases it can have uses, Office 365 is said to be one. Nothing a good template library can’t do better but on occasion it has a useful and occasionally correct outcome. Search on the other hand is plagued by silent errors so that is a long way off.
Why money then? All of these AI features are done where they should be done, at the datacenter. It has the actual performance to do the job right, has the data on hand, memory to run the correct large models instead of far less accurate desktop version, and more. It is the right thing to do in the datacenter for the right reason. The big problem is that Microsoft has to pay for it. It is a cost with little to no direct payback. If they push it to the user, the user pays for those cycles. Genius!
So the user ends up with a far worse version of the result but Microsoft doesn’t foot the bill, in fact they get paid when a new PC is sold. Win/win for them, lose/lose for the user. If you were really cynical you could foresee a program that says something like, “Want better AI results? For only $9.99 a month you can run your AI queries on our servers…”. <sarcasm>Never could happen.</sarcasm> So basically this whole push is nothing more than a way for Microsoft to reduce burgeoning datacenter costs. They know it isn’t a user benefit.
Qualcomm’s new AI/Copilot PCs has overwhelming hype but their actions point to a far murkier picture. SemiAccurate really wanted to like this ‘new’ category but we now are convinced that the reality is nowhere near what the shills will tell you.
Words vs Deeds:
Lets start out with a simple fact of product launches, when you have a good product, get it out there to everyone as early as possible. When you have a bad one, make sure no one can independently test it and therefor contradict your rosy messaging with hard facts. Qualcomm and Microsoft have gone far above and beyond the call of duty to make sure independent reviews of their new SoC in the AI/Copilot PCs can’t happen. This isn’t by chance.
We could regale with stories of launches past where companies intentionally broke parts of press samples they knew would not compare well vs the competition but we won’t. To be fair, Qualcomm didn’t do anything like this, physically, they just made sure no one could test what they wanted on their hardware at press events and no one could get samples in time for real testing.
Some people may have been offered samples to cover for the behavior but they were said to arrive a few days before the on sale date. This is akin to breaking ports in the sense that you have plausible deniability when comprehensive testing can’t be done. In any case Qualcomm and Microsoft have a lot to hide and to be fair, they hid it quite well. We know the official excuses but, well, they simply don’t add up.
Behind the Curtain:
What is Qualcomm hiding and why? Lets start out with the why side, it is easier. The x86 emulation sucks and they know it. Since x86 compatibility is a key marketing message from both players, they want you to believe your software will just run, they have to hide this failing at all costs. Let me split a hair here, the silicon is actually quite good on the x86 emulation front, the team didn’t forget everything they did at Apple but coupled with Windows it, well, ends up sucking. Actually that is a bit unfair, lets just say the end user device sucks and not apportion blame to any one part.
When questioned, Qualcomm spokespeople will fall back to to a talking point about apps that they have tweaked/validated/worked on and those run fine, fast-ish, and without hiccups. This is true but that list is mighty short and chances you have a few apps that will blow up. Games, well, again they go back to casual games running fine which they probably do. Real games don’t and most non-tweaked games don’t either, casual or not. Qualcomm knows this and they are desperate to hide it.
AI PCs Aren’t Intelligent:
Lets move on to the elephant in the room, AI PCs, we will stop using Copilot because it is getting annoying. This is Microsoft’s latest attempt at branding and is distinct from Intel’s AI PC branding and AMD’s Ryzen AI/AI PC branding. For this we will focus on Microsoft’s version which we exclusively told you about here. The TLDR version is that if your CPU has 45TOPS in it’s NPU you get the sticker. And the slush funds, lots and lots of slush funds.
How much? If you play ball like Lenovo purportedly is it means a 50% discount on Windows to start with. You will have to stand up on stage and dance for Microsoft but the cash is about as massive a kickback as SemiAccurate can recall. The money hose is on full blast this time but why? What everyone is calling AI this time around is simply not.
It isn’t powerful enough to make a difference over the TOPS available in the CPU and GPU but it will save a _LITTLE_ energy every so often. The cooked up scenarios shown off over the last few days are perfectly doable with current PCs, just with a little more battery drain. The bunny ears you put on your boss during that endless conference call may be a little more realistic with an AI PC but, well, refresh the corporate fleet NOW! AI PCs have little to no actual advantage over current silicon and that will be the case for a long time to come.
So if this stuff is pretty worthless for the short and mid-term due to lack of performance and lack of apps, why is Microsoft so desperate to push it? Simple enough, money. Microsoft is pimping AI features hard, and in some cases it can have uses, Office 365 is said to be one. Nothing a good template library can’t do better but on occasion it has a useful and occasionally correct outcome. Search on the other hand is plagued by silent errors so that is a long way off.
Why money then? All of these AI features are done where they should be done, at the datacenter. It has the actual performance to do the job right, has the data on hand, memory to run the correct large models instead of far less accurate desktop version, and more. It is the right thing to do in the datacenter for the right reason. The big problem is that Microsoft has to pay for it. It is a cost with little to no direct payback. If they push it to the user, the user pays for those cycles. Genius!
So the user ends up with a far worse version of the result but Microsoft doesn’t foot the bill, in fact they get paid when a new PC is sold. Win/win for them, lose/lose for the user. If you were really cynical you could foresee a program that says something like, “Want better AI results? For only $9.99 a month you can run your AI queries on our servers…”. <sarcasm>Never could happen.</sarcasm> So basically this whole push is nothing more than a way for Microsoft to reduce burgeoning datacenter costs. They know it isn’t a user benefit.
