Intel Urges PC Users to Upgrade as Numerous Brands Adopt Its New AI-powered Chip

(Reuters) – Intel said on Thursday that dozens of PC makers are using its latest chip, as the company and its customers try to entice consumers to upgrade their machines for a new era of chatbots.

At a press conference in New York, Intel said the new offering will be available in laptops from Dell Technologies, Microsoft, Lenovo Group and others that go on sale Thursday at Best Buy in the US and other global retailers, including China’s JD.com. and Australia’s Harvey Norman.

Intel stock rose as much as 3.6% after the news.

Intel central processing units (CPUs) have long served as the brains of most personal computers. But the new chip, codenamed “Meteor Lake,” is Intel’s first to also include a so-called neuroprocessing unit (NPU), a part of the chip dedicated to handling artificial intelligence tasks.

Intel’s pitch to consumers and businesses comes as it fights its way out of a post-pandemic PC slump, where buyers who have shifted to working from home in 2020 have seen little reason to buy new devices.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said during the event that Intel believes using its chips will make AI services cheaper, faster and more private than using services based on cloud data centers.

“It’s going to be the star of the show in the coming year,” Gelsinger said of AI on the PC. “You will unleash this power for every person, every use case and every place in the future.”

During the unveiling of the new chip in September, the company showed examples of AI work it hoped would spark interest, such as transcribing voice notes without having to send data to a third-party cloud provider or create a song in style. pop star Taylor Swift.

Intel also showed off Thursday what it said was the first working version of a chip called Gaudi 3 that it hopes will challenge Nvidia in the data center artificial intelligence market.