California, US, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. Microsoft Corp.'s Copilot+ PCs, the firm's new AI Windows laptops, go on sale at Best Buy Co. stores starting Tuesday. Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergThis week marked the official launch of Microsoft's AI PC program, the Copilot+ PCs, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus System on Chips processors.
A key aspect of the AI PC program from Microsoft has been the integration of a Neural Processing Unit into the AI PC SoCs with at least 40 TOPS of performance. In addition, at least 16 gigabytes of DRAM are required. Given that Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite is the first and currently only SoC that meets Microsoft’s criteria, it is the lead processor for the AI PC program from Microsoft and is presently the only official Copilot + PC SoC supported by Microsoft.
Recall was pulled because of public concern about how the data was stored in the PC and how protected it was from attack. This information should be highly encrypted and protected on the device so that anybody who gained access to the device couldn't easily access this information, but this was not confirmed by Microsoft.
The other concern with the Copilot+ PC program is that at some point in the near future both AMD and Intel will ship Copilot+ compliant processors, and yet Microsoft has not committed to Copilot+ support at the launch of those products. Support will come sometime later when an update is provided to the operating system.