CoPilot+ good. Battery life better.
- Microsoft is so confident that Windows on Arm is going to work that it didn’t even mention this fact when it presented its new Arm-powered devices leaving AMD and Intel with everything to do.
- In a very carefully scripted keynote (see here) Microsoft launched two new Surface devices and showcased more than ten others all of which are members of the new CoPilot+ family of devices.
- These new devices require an NPU that can run at 40 TOPS and with its 45 TOPS NPU, Qualcomm is the only chipmaker that has a product that meets this requirement.
- Both Intel and AMD will produce CoPilot+ capable processors with availability expected by the end of 2024 and Microsoft went to great lengths to play down that at the moment, Qualcomm is the only supplier with commercial products.
- This means that, although no one said it explicitly, every single one of the new PCs launched and showcased yesterday are Windows on Arm devices and the entire ecosystem is very confident, that this time, they have got it right.
- CoPilot+ is a runtime that contains more than 40 small AI models that have been optimised for some of the most common tasks that Microsoft expects users to want.
- Some of these models are LLM-based such as the image and video manipulation functions and real-time translation while others like Recall are more like the deep learning neural networks that are used in search or machine vision.
- CoPilot+ executes the run time on the NPU which leaves the CPU and GPU free to do other things if needed.
- This is where some of Microsoft’s claims of superior performance over Apple’s M3 processor are coming from, but without the testing information, it is impossible to verify.
- However, I think it is pretty safe to say that Microsoft’s new Surface products are very competitive with the MacBook Air running the M3 which is all that really matters.
- CoPilot+ promises to bring a host of new functionality to Windows devices with Recall being the most interesting to someone who uses Windows primarily for productivity.
- Recall can catalogue and cross reference everything that the user does on the PC which can then be easily found again with a simple text or voice-based request.
- The demonstrations of this were excellent (they always are) and if this is even half as good as claimed, then this is a significant lift for Windows in terms of functionality.
- However, this is a low bar because search in both Windows 11 and Office 365 is execrable to the point that I barely use it and I have very little faith in its results.
- The issue with Recall is security and privacy as there is an AI in the background looking over the user’s shoulder all the time and cataloguing what he or she does.
- This is where edge AI comes into play because this AI only runs locally, can be turned on and off as desired and items in the knowledge graph can be deleted at will.
- Even with these safeguards, this graph is effectively the user’s entire digital life on a PC and will cause huge problems for the user if compromised.
- CoPilot+ also brings the ability to edit photos and videos in the Windows environment and the AI agent can be used to make this process much easier and effective.
- These new features are nice to have and will help Microsoft sell the proposition, but the real proposition is battery life and price.
- The new PCs launched today are the same price or cheaper than their Apple, Intel and AMD equivalents with the same performance but double the battery life.
- This is where Intel and AMD have a real problem because it is going to be a major challenge for them to match this using the x86 architecture.
- Both are expected to launch something by the end of 2024 and the performance and battery life specification is going to be crucial as to whether they get much traction in this segment.
- The fact that Microsoft had to play down Windows on Arm and leave plenty of space for x86 is a sign of just how big this challenge is.
- Microsoft is also very confident that this time Windows on Arm is going to work as it thinks that 90% of the user’s time will be spent in apps that already run natively on Arm.
- It also claims that its emulator (Prism) is at least as good as Rosetta 2 which is what Apple used to emulate the x86 processor for non-native apps meaning that users won’t notice when emulation is running.
- Qualcomm has made the same claim, and the proof will be in the testing.
- The most significant part of these announcements is what was not said when it came to the hardware launches.
- Here, no one mentioned Arm which is an implicit statement that OEMs expect that the users will notice only the excellent battery life and not even realise that they are using a different processor architecture.
- Once again, the proof will be in the testing but given how foolish Microsoft is going to look if Windows on Arm flops this time around, I suspect it has already been tested to breaking point.
- Consequently, this represents by far the biggest challenge to x86’s dominant position in Windows laptops leaving it with everything to do to catch up.
- This means that for now CoPilot+ is only available on Windows on Arm PCs where Qualcomm currently has 100% market share.
- I expect that CoPilot+ is going to be a major feature of the Microsoft Build developer conference which kicks off today meaning that there is more to the Arm proposition than just battery life.
- I still think that battery life will be the biggest draw for PC buyers but CoPilot+ is icing on the cake that I was not expecting.
- The biggest beneficiary here is Qualcomm which could now take a substantial amount of share off Intel and AMD in high-priced processors that sell around 250m per year.
- I own Qualcomm and while it is no longer the bargain that it was at 12x 12-month forward PER, I think there is more to go in terms of estimate upgrades and share price movement.
- I am staying put.
