The technology industry is witnessing developments in artificial intelligence at Computex 2024, which will be held in Taipei between June 4 and 7.
Industry giants Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and Arm continue to unveil their next-generation processors and future strategies for managing AI tasks more effectively.
By the way, have you heard about Copilot+ computers? Before the event, Microsoft’s new Copilot features and Apple’s ARM-based AI solutions were also announced.
Of course, innovations are not limited to these companies. Google I/O 2024 and the OpenAI Spring Update event introduced artificial intelligence models that surprised many of us. One can’t help but ask where the AI industry is going. Let’s take a closer look at the highlights from Computex 2024.
Computex 2024 will showcase major advancements in AI
AMD Ryzen 9000 series
AMD is raising the performance bar with the new Ryzen 9000 series of desktop processors launching in July. The series, which includes the Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X, offers a 16% IPC increase over the previous generation, delivering massive performance boosts in gaming and productivity. It outperforms the Intel Core i9-14900K with gains of up to 56% in Blender and 21% in Cinebench 2024.
The new series is built on AMD’s new Zen 5 architecture and utilizes the existing AM5 socket. The Zen 5 architecture doubles instruction bandwidth, data bandwidth, and AI performance while improving branch prediction. The AM5 socket will be extended until 2027 or later. The new X870 and X870E motherboard chipsets offer USB 4.0, PCIe 5 Gen 5 support, and higher EXPO memory overclocking support. Pricing information has not yet been announced, but the series will be released in July.
Ryzen AI 300 series laptops
At Computex 2024, AMD introduced the Ryzen AI 300 Series laptop processors for productive artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Combining XDNA2, RDNA 3.5, and Zen 5 architectures, these chips optimize NPU, GPU, and CPU performance. The first models were announced as Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (12 cores) and Ryzen AI 9 365 (10 cores), offering 50 TOPS of NPU performance.
The Ryzen AI 9 300 series offers higher TOPS than its competitors, highlighted by AMD’s XDNA2 NPU’s ability to handle FP16 AI workloads without quantization. This enables AI models to run both fast and accurately. Starting in July 2024, the new Ryzen AI chips will be in various laptops, including Microsoft’s Copilot Plus PCs.
Nvidia Project G-Assist
Nvidia announced Project G-Assist as an April Fool’s joke in 2017, and seven years later, it has brought it back with a demo of a powerful AI assistant. This in-development assistant has the potential to guide players in-game and optimize game settings through chat.
ARK: Survival Ascended, G-Assist guides players by responding to voice commands and can even analyze the screen to make personalized recommendations. It also makes suggestions for improving PC performance. However, the fact that this impressive technology is not yet fully operational and that AI is prone to making mistakes raises some concerns. Nevertheless, the work of companies such as Microsoft and Nvidia in this field indicates that AI-powered gaming assistants could be in our lives soon.
Nvidia SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce cards
Nvidia has launched a new initiative called “SFF-Ready Enthusiast GeForce Cards” to make it easier to fit powerful graphics cards into smaller gaming computers (SFF). Instead of directly reducing the size of the cards, the initiative enables the use of higher-performance GPUs in SFF PCs by guaranteeing compatibility with specific chassis and graphics card combinations. This makes it easier for manufacturers and users to determine which graphics cards will fit in a chassis.
These so-called “SFF-Ready” cards are not that small, and some may not fit standard SFF cases. However, Nvidia hopes this initiative will allow case makers to design smaller but more powerful gaming PCs and allow users to use higher-performance GPUs on such PCs. In addition, Nvidia’s future RTX 5090 Founders Edition card will allegedly feature a dual-slot cooler, raising hopes for powerful graphics cards in smaller sizes.
Nvidia and AMD rivalry spills over to gaming laptops
Microsoft’s new gaming laptops with AI-powered Copilot Plus features are getting ready to meet users with the collaboration of Nvidia and AMD. Manufactured by Asus and MSI, these Nvidia-powered laptops with GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and Windows 11 AI PC features will take the gaming experience to the next level. Conversely, AMD aims to boost performance by integrating its Strix CPUs into these laptops. However, the first AMD-powered Copilot Plus PCs may lack some of Microsoft’s AI features.
Nvidia is working closely with Microsoft in this area, emphasizing the power of its GPUs in AI-enabled tasks. It offers GPU-accelerated small language models (SLMs) to give developers easy access to on-device AI features powered by the Windows Copilot Runtime. This allows developers to add AI-powered features to their applications and accelerate them with NPU hardware or Nvidia’s GPUs. Microsoft’s Windows Copilot Runtime is designed to make it easier for developers to add AI-powered features to their applications. Watching this AI battle on the PC will be highly intriguing, especially as Microsoft controls it natively in Windows for Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and other OEM partners.
ASUS ROG Ally X is now available for pre-order
Asus ambitiously entered the portable gaming PC market with the ROG Ally X model. With a $799 pre-order price, this new device addresses the weaknesses of its predecessor and offers major improvements in key areas such as battery life, storage, performance, and ergonomics.
One of the highlights of ROG Ally X is the large 80-watt-hour battery that delivers twice the gaming time. It also offers twice the storage space with a full-length M.2 2280 PCIe 4 SSD slot. Other notable innovations include a second USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, 50 percent more and faster 7500MHz memory, and a revamped interior layout and ergonomics.
With user experience at the forefront, ROG Ally X features better and lighter joysticks, a larger D-pad, longer face buttons, more powerful speakers, touch actuators for better feedback, and wider triggers.
Asus also announced that all ROG Ally devices in North America now come with a two-year warranty. The ROG Ally X challenges the competition on battery life, but without a more efficient chip and display, dethroning the Steam Deck OLED will be an uphill task.
Computex 2024 is an event where AI pushes power and technology to its limits. Many innovations shed light on future technology, from next-generation processors to AI-powered gaming assistants and portable gaming PCs. In this fiercely competitive market, we are eagerly waiting to see what surprises Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Asus, and other tech giants will bring us in the future. Computex 2024 was a technology fair and a window into future technology.
Featured image credit: Computex
