So far, Microsoft has shown that AI lives in the cloud. AMD, Intel and Qualcomm want AI to live on the PC powered by their processors. Does this lead to potential conflict?
Apparently not. At AMD’s “Emerging AI” presentation, where the company launched its Ryzen 8040 AI-powered mobile processor family, Microsoft’s Windows executive said cloud AI and local AI can coexist.
This is not a trivial matter. Microsoft not only provides licenses for millions of Windows machines, but also sells Microsoft 365 subscriptions to even more: 76 million consumer subscribers as of the current third calendar quarter of 2023, with business growth of 14 percent on top of that. Microsoft also wants to charge users $30 per month for Microsoft 365 Copilot, an artificial intelligence tool it will use to increase productivity. Like most of Microsoft’s services, it will use the Microsoft Azure cloud, which accounts for the bulk of Microsoft’s revenue.
AMD, along with its rivals, wants consumers and commercial customers to run AI on their local computers. AMD highlighted applications like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as implementations of BlackMagic’s DaVinci Resolve that use on-chip AI. Microsoft’s own Windows Studio Effects also takes advantage of native AI capabilities to blur backgrounds and filter audio. Deploying AI functions in the cloud could diminish chip manufacturers and the value they add.
Fortunately, Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s new corporate vice president at Windows and Devices, talked about a hybrid strategy of using both native AI and the cloud to handle AI functions.
“This is really about seamless computing across cloud and client; combines the advantages of local computing; It combines features like improved privacy and responsiveness and [low] latency with the power of the cloud: microphones, models, big datasets, cross-platform inference, and so on,” Davuluri said. “And so we think we’re working together to create the future destination of the best AI experiences on PC.”
AMD general manager Dr. Lisa Su joked with Davuluri that Microsoft is always demanding more TOPS (trillions of operations per second). Davuluri replied, “We will use any TOP you provide.”
“With Windows, we feel like we’re building that future for Copilot where we’ll be orchestrating multiple apps, services, and across devices; quite frankly, acting as an intermediary that has context in your life and maintains context across all workflows,” Su said. He concluded. “So we’re really excited about these devices, the Windows ecosystem, coming to life.”