On Monday, Intel Corporation’s shares lifted after it projected sales of 100 million CPUs for AI PCs by 2025, exposing its AI arms race strategy.
The California-headquartered tech giant’s stock jumped 4.08% to $45.61 per share on March 04. Moreover, market analysts predict a 0.75% increase to $45.95 apiece in the coming trading day.
Intel trailed behind other major tech companies after the November 2022 release of ChatGPT sparked the GenAI arms race. While its competitors focused on incorporating high-end GPUs into their large-language models (LLMs), the chipmaker still prioritized CPU development.
Eventually, the firm shifted its attention to AI PCs, computers with a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) in their CPU. The NPU specializes in tackling machine learning tasks and GenAI processes, catering to PC users who often use ChatGPT services.
AMD predicted that AI PCs will begin taking over the consumer PC market as early as this year. Intel Vice President of Client Computing David Feng said he expects AI PC sales to represent 20.00% of the $220.00 billion PC industry by 2025.
Feng added that they partnered with Microsoft to create a strategy to inform consumers of the difference between AI and traditional PCs. Furthermore, Intel is working on creating an NPU-powered CPU specifically designed for the Windows Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant.
AI PCs to Allow Intel to Threaten Nvidia
Intel collaborator Hugging Face said CPUs can outperform GPUs in certain AI workloads when installed on AI PCs. The New York-based French-American app developer added that CPUs offer higher efficiency with smaller language models.
Hence, the collaboration aims to optimize the Xeon Sapphire Rapids, Intel’s server CPU, for specialized GenAI models. As a result, the partnership developed the Smooth Quants technique that can quantize and compress data with minimal efficiency loss.
Hugging Face is a leading AI R&D company focused on exploring the potential of CPUs designed explicitly for AI PCs. It has worked with several industry giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, to challenge Nvidia’s monopoly in the AI space.
