Nvidia and AMD will be integrating Microsoft's Copilot Plus AI features into upcoming gaming laptops
Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to launch gaming laptops that include the AI Copilot Plus features that Microsoft just announced for Qualcomm-powered laptops.
Nvidia teased "RTX AI PC" laptops from partners that will include Copilot Plus, suggesting the new gaming laptops will leverage AI and machine learning to provide advanced assistant-like capabilities beyond just gaming.
“Newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities,” says Nvidia in a blog post. Nvidia confirmed to The Verge in a briefing that these laptops will come with AMD’s latest Strix CPUs.
AMD has not yet revealed details about its AMD Strix laptop CPUs, but is expected to do so during its Computex keynote.
Nvidia has hinted that the initial AMD-powered laptops with Copilot Plus features may not get the full set of Microsoft's AI capabilities right away.
“These Windows 11 AI PCs will receive a free update to Copilot+ PC experiences when available,” says Nvidia in a blog post. That suggests that Microsoft might not be ready to launch Recall and the other AI-powered Windows features on AMD chips, or that there could be some period of exclusivity for the Windows on Arm Qualcomm-powered hardware that launches on June 18th. Either way, we’ve reached out to Nvidia to clarify what its brief mention of this free update means.
Nvidia is trying to maintain its relevance in the domain of AI-powered tasks on laptops, as Microsoft pushes ahead with offloading AI models to dedicated NPUs. Nvidia is leaning heavily into branding "RTX AI laptops", asserting that its GPUs are more capable of handling heavier AI workloads compared to NPUs.
To bolster this position, Nvidia is launching an RTX AI Toolkit in June. This toolkit will include tools and SDKs to allow customization, optimization, and deployment of AI models like Meta's Llama 2, enabling them to run more efficiently with less VRAM requirements.
Additionally, Nvidia is collaborating with Microsoft on the underlying AI models being integrated into Windows 11. This collaboration will provide app developers easy API access to GPU-accelerated small language models that enable retrieval-augmented generation capabilities, running on-device powered by the Windows Copilot Runtime.
Microsoft announced its Windows Copilot Runtime at the recent Build conference. Nvidia states that its work to accelerate AI models using RTX GPUs will be released in developer preview later this year.
The Windows Copilot Runtime is designed to make it easier for developers to integrate AI-powered features into their applications. This Runtime allows apps to leverage either NPU hardware or Nvidia GPUs to accelerate those AI capabilities.
There are significant performance differences between the two approaches. Current NPUs are in the ~40 TOPS range for AI acceleration. In contrast, Nvidia's PC GPUs can deliver over 1,000 TOPS of AI performance.
This suggests NPUs are optimized for smaller AI models and power efficiency on laptops, while Nvidia's GPU-based approach can handle larger AI models with higher performance on desktop PCs where battery life is less of a concern.
So developers will need to weigh the tradeoffs between NPU and GPU-based AI acceleration when building applications that leverage the Windows Copilot Runtime features.
