Intel to Enable Copilot+ on Desktops with Arrow Lake NPU Boost
While Microsoft’s Copilot+ AI features are currently limited to a small pool of AI-enabled laptops, that exclusivity may soon end. A report from ZDNet Korea, relayed by The Verge, reveals that Intel is gearing up to refresh its Arrow Lake desktop processors with a significantly upgraded Neural Processing Unit (NPU)—dubbed “NPU 4”—later this year.
This upgraded NPU is set to hit the 40 TOPS performance mark, the threshold Microsoft requires for desktops to officially support Copilot+ experiences, including high-profile tools like Windows Recall. Until now, these features have been reserved for mobile chips, such as Intel’s Lunar Lake processors, which will share the same NPU architecture.
While Arrow Lake’s upcoming NPU will match the AI capabilities of Lunar Lake, no additional CPU or GPU cores are expected in the new desktop chips compared to existing Core Ultra 200 models. That said, the AI performance leap alone could open the floodgates for Copilot+ to enter desktop computing at scale.
For users interested in AI-driven Windows experiences but uninterested in switching to laptops or Arm-based devices, this update from Intel could finally make Copilot+ on desktop PCs a reality by the end of 2025.