AI Unites Cloud and PC Platforms, Says Windows Chief

AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm want AI to live on the PC, powered by their own processors. At AMD’s “Advancing AI” presentation, the company launched the Ryzen 8040 family of AI-enhanced mobile processors. Microsoft sells Microsoft 365 subscriptions to 76 million consumer subscribers as of the current third calendar quarter of 2023, with commercial growth of 14 percent on top of that. AMD, along with its rivals, wants consumers and commercial customers to run AI on the local PC, highlighting applications like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and BlackMagic’s DaVinci Resolve that use on-chip AI instead. Microsoft not only supplies licenses for millions of Windows machines but also wants to charge users $30 per month for Microsoft 365 Copilot, which will use the Microsoft Azure cloud. Fortunately, Pavan Davuluri, the new corporate vice president within Microsoft’s Windows and Devices division, alluded to a hybrid strategy of using both local AI as well as the cloud to process AI functions. Davuluri referred to what he calls a “hybrid engine,” where the cloud and local computing work together, creating seamless computing across the cloud and client to build the best AI experiences on PCs.