olly - stock.adobe.comNewsPC makers use CES to showcase AI PC effortsA range of AMD, Intel and ARM-powered PCs with neural processing units are aiming to boost office productivityByCliff Saran,Managing EditorPublished: 09 Jan 2025 15:36 The leading PC manufacturer used the Consumer Electronics Show to showcase their latest line-up of AI PCs powered by neural processing units (NPU). HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Asus all demoed new AI PC offerings at the Las Vegas event.HP unveiled the Z2 Mini and ZBook Ultra, which the company claims enables users to engage in 3D design, render graphics-intensive projects simultaneously, and work locally with LLMs.The new HP hardware is powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO processor. HP said the ZBook Ultra offers features up to 16 desktop-class CPU cores, discrete-like integrated graphics, and up to 128GB of innovative unified memory architecture, and the ability to assign up to 96GB RAM to the graphics processing unit (GPU).Lenovo used the event to demonstrate the enhanced user experience available on the Intel Core Ultra-powered Lenovo AI Now and Lenovo Aura Edition PCs.Lenovo AI Now on the companys flagship ThinkPad X9 offers what Lenovo calls an advanced on-device AI assistant to deliver real-time intelligence to users. Built on a local large language model (LLM) using Metas Llama 3.0, Lenovo AI Now stores and processes all user data locally, which Lenovo said safeguards user information while delivering powerful, real-time AI capabilities. Lenovo said it can be used to automate and simplify tasks such as document organisation and device management, supporting AI applications such as natural language queries across locally stored documents.The company said it will be expanding Lenovo AI Nows capabilities with the ability to search for information across PCs and supported tablet devices, and an intelligent search capability for retrieving relevant information from selected portions of images or documents.Dell has focused on simplifying AI development on PCs. Its new Dell Pro AI Studio offers an AI toolkit with validated tools, frameworks, templates and models, to help developers and IT administrators build and manage AI software independent of the underlying silicon. Dell claims this can reduce development and deployment time by as much as 75%, going from six months to as little as six weeks.Acers new Copilot+ lineup includes the Swift Go 16 AI and Swift Go 14 AI laptops and the Aspire C AI AIOs. These are powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processors. The hardware uses the AMD XDNA 2 NPU architecture, which Acer said delivers up to 50 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI performance and includes AMD Radeon 800M graphics. According to Acer, the new Swift Go AI laptops are able to run efficiently and reliably for all-day use with a battery life of up to 24.9 hours of video playback.It has also introduced the Intel Core-powered Aspire S AI and Revo Box AI devices.Beyond x86-based AI PCs, Asus unveiled its Snapdragon-powered Zenbook A14. This device uses the Snapdragon X Series Processors and offers up to 45W TDP performance along with a neural processing capability of 45 TOPS. Asus claims it offers up to 32 hours of battery life, which can be further extended or customised with MyASUS Battery Care Mode. The device includes 2 USB 4.0 ports, an audio jack, a type-A port and an HDMI port.Read more about AI PCsAMD, Intel and Nvidias latest moves in the AI PC chip race: Major chip makers used Computex 2024 to launch their aggressive AI chip strategies and stake a claim in the burgeoning AI PC market.A fifth of new PCs shipped in Q3 were AI-optimised: PC manufacturers are working hard to showcase the benefits of premium devices that use neural processing units to deliver on-device AI acceleration.In The Current Issue:What do the home secretarys policing reforms mean for the future of the Police Digital Service?What are the security risks of bring your own AI?Download Current IssueBeyond Textbooks: why businesses must invest in grassroots stem initiatives WITsendData Engineering - Astronomer: Can you trust your AI agent? CW Developer NetworkView All Blogs