Warehouses in the IT channel are stocking up with AI-capable PCs - industry watcher Canalys claims these made up 20 percent of all shipments during Q3 2024, amounting to some 13.3 million units worldwide.
In one sense, this doesn't really matter, since it is likely you won't be able to buy any computer thatthat such systems may account for 43 percent of PCs by 2025, and go on to make up the bulk of the market by 2026. But then Microsoft added to the confusion by introducing its own definition of"Copilot+ PC" to describe Windows systems with an NPU that performs at 40As Canalys says in its report, both Intel and AMD are still awaiting Copilot+ PC support from Microsoft for their latest CPUs, adding another swirl of uncertainty to the mix.
However, if it is performance you are concerned about,"it's important to note that GPUs still far outperform NPUs in terms of raw performance," Jessop said, while NPUs are more power-efficient and better suited for running perpetually. Canalys says a key challenge for vendors will be to convince customers to future-proof for a potential wave of on-device AI use cases, which is almost entirely lacking at the moment.