Microsoft announced a few months ago the Co-pilot + artificial intelligence for Windows 11. For this to work, a processor with NPU cores with power equal to or greater than 40 TOPS is MANDATORY required. Although, as Intel recently revealed, it’s really just a mechanism for planned obsolescencesince any graphics card could run Copilot+ tasks.
The Copilot+ feature, for the moment, is only exclusive to Snapdragon X Plus and Elite processors. In the coming weeks, Intel and AMD are expected to release laptop processors that also support this Microsoft technology.
All chips must have neural processing units (NPUs) capable of performing more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS). If the system does not have a processor containing NPUs or if it has a lower power than that specified by Microsoft, it will not be able to use this new tool.
Forced to buy a new computer without needing one
For those who don’t know, the term planned obsolescence refers to the fact that products have a certain lifespan. Manufacturers may make a lower quality product, hoping that it will break after a certain period of use, forcing you to buy a new one.
In computing and technology, it is not so necessary to produce a lower quality product. For example, in IT, it is used to change software or requirements after an update. This happened with Windows 11, which includes TPM 2.0, making it impossible to install this operating system without this item.
Today they invented a completely fictitious new measure to force us to update our computer. The inclusion of AI Copilot+ in Windows 11 it seeks to force the user to update the computer. As we mentioned, it can only be used on systems whose processor has the NPU
The fact is, as Intel explains on its website and in one of its Lunar Lake presentation slides, NPUs are useless.
Intelduring the presentation of the Lunar lake, indicated that the NPUs of its processors could offer a power of between 40 TOPS and 48 TOPS. But, on one of the slides, he indicates that his tokens can offer a power of up to 120 HIGHhow is this possible?
All Intel processors (except “F” and “KF”) have integrated graphics. The company says Lunar Lake chips have a iGPU which has a computing power of HIGH 60s.
In addition to the higher performance NPU, Lunar Lake will also be equipped with more than 60 TOPS GPUs, offering more than 100 platform TOPS.
Every computer has a graphics card, it will be more or less powerful depending on its design. Therefore, the vast majority of computers on the market could take advantage of Copilot+ on Windows 11 without the need for an NPU.
Microsoft developed this set of AI tools, functions, and capabilities to work with new kernels that render most systems obsolete. They could have developed this set of AI-based solutions that would run under the GPU, without requiring new hardware.
The GPU is a perfect component for AI, since they are developed to work in parallel, which is necessary for this technology. Just look at how NVIDIA sells its GPUs like hotcakes for AI.
It is clear that Microsoft’s strategy with the main chip manufacturers is to generate planned obsolescence. Also, are the features of Copilot+ really interesting and necessary?
