See: "3D TVs are driving the biggest change in TVs in decades"
Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
61–70 of 273 posts
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#62I feel like there's no point to get a graphics card nowadays. Clearly, graphics cards are optimized for graphics; they just happened to be good for AI but based on the increased significance of AI, I'd be surprised if we don't get more specialized chips and specialized machines just for LLMs. One for LLMs, a different one for stable diffusion. With graphics processing, you need a lot of bandwidth to get stuff in and…
Nah, that's just plain wrong.
First, GPGPU is powerful and flexible. You can make an "AI-specific accelerator", but it wouldn't be much simpler or much more power-efficient - while being a lot less flexible. And since you need to run traditional graphics and AI workloads both in consumer hardware? It makes sense to run both on the same hardware.
And bandwidth? GPUs are notorious for not being bandwidth starved. 4K@60FPS seems like a lot of data to push in or out, but it's nothing compared to how fast modern PCIe 5.0 x16 goes. AI accelerators are more of the same.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#63I predict we will see compute-in-flash before we see cheap laptops with 128+ gigs of ram.
Memristors are (IME) missing from the news. They promised to act as both persistent storage and fast RAM.
If only memristors weren't vaporware that has "shown promise" for 3 decades now and went nowhere.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#64See: "3D TVs are driving the biggest change in TVs in decades"
A lazy easy cheap shot. But do you deny these aspects from the article are not coming? Or won't be still here in 5 years?
- Addition of more—and faster—memory.
- Consolidation of memory.
- Combination of chips on the same silicon.
All of these are also happening for non AI reasons. The move to SoC that really started with the M1 wasn't because of AI, but unified memory being the default is something we will see in 5 years. Unlike 3D TV.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#65"How many TOPS do you need to run state-of-the-art models with hundreds of millions of parameters? No one knows exactly."
What's he talking about? It's trivial to calculate that.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#66I mean, having a more powerful laptop is great, but at the same time, these guys are calling for a >10x increase in RAM and a far more powerful NPU. How will this affect pricing? How will it affect power management? It made it seem like most of the laptop will be dedicated to gen AI services, which I'm still not entirely convinced are quite THAT useful. I still want a cheap laptop that lasts all day and I also want to be able to tap that device's full power for heavy compute jobs!
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#67I was in the market for a laptop this month. Many new laptops now advertise AI features like this "HP OmniBook 5 Next Gen AI PC" which advertises: "SNAPDRAGON X PLUS PROCESSOR - Achieve more everyday with responsive performance for seamless multitasking with AI tools that enhance productivity and connectivity while providing long battery life" I don't want this garbage on my laptop, especially when its running of its…
Laptop manufacturers are too desperate to cash on the AI craze. There's nothing special about an 'AI PC'. It's just a regular PC with Windows Copilot... which is a standard Windows feature anyway. >I don't want this garbage on my laptop, especially when its running of its battery! The one bit of good news is it's not going to impact your battery life because it doesn't do any on-device processing. It's just calling a…
There's nothing special with what Intel has lowered the bar as an AI PC so vendors can market it. Ollama can run a 4b model plenty fine on Tiger Lake with 8gb classic RAM.
But unified memory IS truly what makes an AI ready PC. The Apple Silicon proves that. People are willing to pay the premium, and I suspect unified memory will still be around and bringing us benefits even if no one cares about LLMs in 5 years.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#68See: "3D TVs are driving the biggest change in TVs in decades"
This article is just saying more laptops will have power efficient GPUs in it. A bit better than 3D TVs.
They might not use Apple silicon often. Other options are encouraging.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#69Seems like wishful thinking. > How many TOPS do you need to run state-of-the-art models with hundreds of millions of parameters? No one knows exactly. Why not extrapolate from open-source AIs which are available? The most powerful open-source AI (which I know of) is Kimi K2 and >600gb. Running this at acceptable speed requires 600+gb GPU/NPU memory. Even $2000-3000 AI-focused PCs like the DGX spark or Strix Halo typi…
You may be correct, but I wonder if we'll see Mac Mini sized external AI boxes that do have the 1TB of RAM and other hardware for running local models. Maybe 100% of computer users wouldn't have one, but maybe 10-20% of power users would, including programmers who want to keep their personal code out of the training set, and so on. I would not be surprised though if some consumer application made it desirable for eac…
But will it ever lead to a Mac Mini-priced external AI box? Or will this always be a premium "pro" tier that seems to rival used car prices?
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#70See: "3D TVs are driving the biggest change in TVs in decades"
A lazy easy cheap shot. But do you deny these aspects from the article are not coming? Or won't be still here in 5 years? - Addition of more—and faster—memory. - Consolidation of memory. - Combination of chips on the same silicon. All of these are also happening for non AI reasons. The move to SoC that really started with the M1 wasn't because of AI, but unified memory being the default is something we will see in 5…
Memory is absolutely not coming in the near future. Nobody can afford it.