I predict we will see compute-in-flash before we see cheap laptops with 128+ gigs of ram.
There was a company that did compute-in-dram, which was recently acquired by Qualcomm: https://www.emergentmind.com/topics/upmem-pim-system
Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
81–90 of 273 posts
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#82You don't understand the needs of a common laptop user. Define the usecases that require reaching out to laptop instead of using the phone that is nearby. Those usecases don't need LLM for a common laptop user.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#83I 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…
I have a Snapdragon laptop and it is the best I've ever had. But the NPU is really almost useless.
This is a nice companion to the article: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2965927/the-great-npu-failur...
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#84This mostly just shows you how far behind the M1 (which came out 5 years ago) all the non Apple laptops are.
Was never really into Apple hardware (mainly the price), however I recently got an M1 Mac Mini and an iPhone for app development, and the inference speed for as you say, a 5 year old chip is actually crazy.
If they made the M series fully open for Linux (I know Asahi is working away) I probably would never buy another non-M series processor again.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#85With the wild ram prices, which btw are probably going to last out 2026, I expect 8 GB ram to be the new standard going on forward.
32 GB ram will be for enthusiasts with deep pockets, and professionals. Anything over that, exclusively professionals.
The conspiracy theorist inside me is telling me that big AI companies like OpenAI would rather see that people are using their puny laptops as terminals / shells only, to reach sky-based models, than to let them have beefy laptops and local models.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#86I predict we will see compute-in-flash before we see cheap laptops with 128+ gigs of ram.
You could get 128gb ram laptops from the time ddr4 came around: workstation class laptops with 4 ram slots would happily take 128gb of memory. The fact that nowadays there are little to no laptops with 4 ran slots is entirely artificial.
I was mussing this summer if I should get a refurbed Thinkpad P16 with 96GB of RAM to run VMs purely in memory. Now that 96GB of ram cost as much as a second P16.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#87This mostly just shows you how far behind the M1 (which came out 5 years ago) all the non Apple laptops are.
You can still get an M1 Macbook Air at retail for $599 ($300 for refurbs), which is a Chromebook price for a laptop that is better in pretty much every respect than any Chromebook.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#88I 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…
> Running AI on your laptop is like playing Starcraft Remastered on the Xbox
A great analogy because there is Starcraft for a console - Nintendo 64 - and it is quite awkward. Split-screen multiplayer included.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#89I 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…
I have a Snapdragon laptop and it is the best I've ever had. But the NPU is really almost useless. This is a nice companion to the article: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2965927/the-great-npu-failur...
Agreed, I have the ARM based T14s for work.
The thing is nowhere near the performance as a macbook, but its silent and the battery lasts ages, which is a far cry from the same laptop with an Intel CPU, which is what many are running.
Company removes a lot of the AI bloat though.
Re: Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Memory prices will rise short term and generally fall long term, even with the current supply hiccup the answer is to just build out more capacity (which will happen if there is healthy competition). I meant, I expect the other mobile chip providers to adopt unified architecture and beefy GPU cores on chip and lots of bandwidth to connect it to memory (at the max or ultra level, at least), I think AMD is already doin…
> Memory prices will rise short term and generally fall long term, even with the current supply hiccup the answer is to just build out more capacity (which will happen if there is healthy competition) Don't worry! Sam Altman is on it. Making sure there never is healthy competition that is. https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...
We’ve been through multiple cycles of scarcity/surplus DRAM cycles in the last couple of decades. Why do we think it will be different now?