Intel And Microsoft Team Up To Bring AI To Windows PCs At Scale, What You Need To Know

Intel and Microsoft announced the two tech giants are working together to drive the development of artificial intelligence (AI) on personal computing (PC). The announcement comes as part of Microsoft's Build 2023 conference, where the two previewed the AI capabilities of the upcoming Meteor Lake client PC processors.

The new Meteor Lake processor is said to mark a significant milestone in the evolution of not just personal computing, but how users interact with technology as well. Intel states it begins with the "chiplet" system-on-chip (SoC) design which allows the company to deliver "advanced intellectual properties (IPs) and leading-edge processes to optimize segment-relevant performance and lower power."

Meteor Lake is the first PC platform from Intel featuring a built-in neural VPU, a dedicated AI engine integrated directly on the SoC to power efficiently run AI models, according to an Intel press release. The new processor will play a vital role in the future of innovation and PC experiences for consumers and businesses with its new neural VPU combined with AI accelerators on the CPU and GPU.

“We’re excited to collaborate on AI with Intel with the scale Meteor Lake will bring to the Windows PC ecosystem. Together, we are enabling developers to use ONNX Runtime and related toolchains to run their AI models optimally on the Windows platform,” said Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice president, of Windows Silicon & System Integration, Microsoft Corp.

Meteor Lake developers can also look forward to being able to leverage developer tools, that include ONNX Runtime support enabled through OpenVino-EP and DirectML-EP. Developers can also take advantage of more effective machine learning and Microsoft Studio Effects, including background blur, eye automatic-framing, and voice focus.

Intel says this is just the beginning of an "exciting multiyear journey of AI-accelerated transformation at scale." The company is expected to ship millions of units of Meteor Lake with its dedicated AI engine, and as it scales up even more with future generations of products, it will put AI-accelerated experiences in the hands of hundreds of millions of people.