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Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

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Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#311

Post by adastra22 »

krooj wrote: post #232
pseudosavant wrote: post #133

I don't know how many others here have a CoPilot+ PC but the NPU on it is basically useless. There isn't any meaningful feature I get by having that NPU. They are far too limited to ever do any meaningful local LLM inference, image processing or generation. It handles stuff like video chat background blurring, but users' PC's have been doing that for years now without an NPU.

Question - from the perspective of the actual silicon, are these NPUs just another form of SIMD? If so, that's laughable sleight of hand and the circuits will be relegated to some mothball footnote in the same manner as AVX512, etc. To be fair, SIMD made a massive difference for early multimedia PCs for things like music playback, gaming, and composited UIs.

> circuits will be relegated to some mothball footnote in the same manner as AVX512

AVX512 is widely used...

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#312

Post by bluedino »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

I want AI to do useful stuff. Like comb through eBay auctions or Cars.com. Find the exact thing I want. Look at things in photos, descriptions, etc

I don't think an NPU has that capability.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#313

Post by leonidasv »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

You don't need a LLM for that, a simple Markov Chain can solve that with a much smaller footprint.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#314

Post by adastra22 »

martinald wrote: post #237
giantrobot wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's neural engine is used a lot by the non-LLM ML tasks all over the system like facial recognition in photos and the like. The point of it isn't to be some beefy AI co-processor but to be a low-power accelerator for background ML workloads. The same workloads could use the GPU but it's more general purpose and thus uses more power for the same task. The same reason macOS uses hardware acceleration for video code…

Yes of course but it's basically a waste of silicon (which is very valuable) imo - you save a handful of watts to do very few tasks. I would be surprised if in the length of my MacBook the NPU has been utilised more than 1% of the time the system is being used. You still need a GPU regardless if you can do JPEG and h264 decode on the card - for games, animations, etc etc.

Do you use Apple's Photos app? Ever see those generated "memories," or search for photos by facial recognition? Where do you think that processing is being done?

Your macbook's NPU is probably active every moment that your computer is on, and you just didn't know about it.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#315

Post by adastra22 »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #186
jorvi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing Apple is behind on in the AI race is LLMs. They've been vastly ahead of everyone else with things like text OCR, image element recognition / extraction, microphone noise suppression, etc. iPhones have had these features 2-5 years before Android did.

Apple’s AI powered image editor (like removing something from the background) is near unusable. Samsung’s is near magic, Google’s seems great. So there’s a big gap here.

That is unrelated to and unmentioned in the post you are responding to.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#316

Post by aleph_minus_one »

leptons wrote: post #287
tpurves wrote: post #11

Dell is cooked this year for reasons entirely outside their control. DRAM and storage/drive shortages are causing costs of those to go to the moon. And Dell's 'inventory' light supply chain and narrow margins puts them in a perfect storm of trouble.

I can't wait for all the data center fire-sales when the whole "AI" boom goes bust. Ebay is going to be flooded with tech.

> I can't wait for all the data center fire-sales when the whole "AI" boom goes bust. Ebay is going to be flooded with tech.

I think a lot of the hardware of these "AI" servers will rather get re-purposes for more "ordinary" cloud applications. So I don't think your scenario will happen.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#317

Post by aleph_minus_one »

mrinterweb wrote: post #228

Most consumers aren't running LLMs locally. Most people's on-device AI is likely whatever Windows 11 is doing, and Windows 11 AI functionality is going over like a lead balloon. The only open-weight models that can come close to major frontier models require hundreds of gigabytes of high bandwidth RAM/VRAM. Still, your average PC buyer isn't interested in running their own local LLM. The AMD AI Max and Apple M chips…

> your average PC buyer isn't interested in running their own local LLM.

This does not fit my observation. It's rather that running one's local LLM is currently far too complicated for the average PC user.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#318

Post by jrflowers »

ragazzina wrote: post #239
m348e912 wrote: post #9

Protip, if you are considering a dell xps laptop, consider the dell precision laptop workstation instead which is the business version of the consumer level xps. It also looks like names are being changed, and the business laptops are going with a dell pro (essential/premium/plus/max) naming convention.

I just want a solid laptop that can be used with the lid closed. I want to set it up and never open the lid again. I'll guess I'll keep dreaming.

Yeah they should make a laptop where you can choose what display you want to use, and which keyboard and mouse for that matter. It could be made cheaper by ditching the screen and keyboard, and heck I wouldn’t even mind if it were a bit bigger or heavier since it’ll just sit on or under my desk. That sort of laptop would be amazing.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#319

Post by aleph_minus_one »

adastra22 wrote: post #309
observationist wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that tokenization is what they're for is absurd - you're talking a tenth of a thousandth of a millionth of a percent of efficiency gain in real world usage, if that, and only if someone bothers to implement it in software that actually gets used. NPUs are racing stripes, nothing more. No killer features or utility, they probably just had stock and a good deal they could market and tap into the AI wave with.

NPUs aren't meant for LLMs. There are a lot more neural net tech out there than LLMs.

> NPUs aren't meant for LLMs. There are a lot more neural net tech out there than LLMs.

OK, but where can I find demo applications of these that will blow my mind (and make me want to buy a PC with an NPU)?

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#320

Post by cmckn »

ericmcer wrote: post #259
havblue wrote: post #250

I think the moral of the story is just don't buy any electronics until you absolutely have to now: your laptop, your desktop, your car, your phone, your tv's. Go third party for maintenance when you can. Install Linux when you can. Only buy things that can be maintained and enjoy what you have.

I got a new Subaru and the touchscreen is making me insane. I will avoid electronics in cars as much as possible going forward. It literally has a warning that displays every time you start the car: "Watching this screen and making selections while driving can lead to serious accidents". Then you have to press agree before you can use the A/C or stereo. Like oh attempting to turn the air conditioner on in your car ca…

Usually that legalese goes away after ~30 seconds or when you put it in drive, you rarely have to actually hit “OK”. But I haven’t been in a recent Subaru!
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