AI PCs: This Backpack Just Ate A Four-Stroke V6!

There's a limit to which a CPU-based PC can be stretched for AI workloads. But add some GPU/NPU pistons and you could be looking at something that's still small but now ready with all AI-chops. Is the formula for PCs moving towards AI? Will it run?

- Pratima H

What's better than watching Verstappen in an F1 Grand Prix? Perhaps watching a First-PersonView (FPV) drone that's right around him, cruising effortlessly at 220 mph! It is exciting. Because it is new. And hard.

Something that AI PCs are trying to do as they chase the new-world workloads that run as fast and as furiously as an FI beast. But how do you turn a drone into a racing horse to get that kind of speed? How do you shrink Al-scale computing brutes to the size of a PC shelf?

A lot is going on to crack that 'how'. Maybe because now is the perfect lap to do that. Or at least, try to do that. The world is guzzling up advances in AI and ML with a never-before appetite. The contrails of excitement are all across the enterprise sky too.

In fact, it is being expected that by 2028, 50 percent of enterprise platforms will leverage specialized infrastructures to support AI infusion (way up from fewer than 10 percent in 2023) as surmised by Gartner. Canalys' latest forecast augurs that about 48 million AI-capable PCs will ship worldwide in 2024 - making up around 18 percent of total PC shipments. They will keep making further inroads here. AI-capable PC shipments could surpass 100 million in 2025, carving out 40 percent of all PC shipments. In 2028, vendors could ship 205 million AI-capable PCs. From the lens of IDC too, the surge is inevitable. Shipments of AI PCs are growing from nearly 50 million units in 2024 to more than 167 million in 2027. By the end of the forecast, IDC pegs AI PCs to represent nearly 60 percent of all PC shipments worldwide.

We can see the signs already- especially with all the noise drummed up in this area by biggies like Intel and NVIDIA (rolling out dedicated offerings on specialized AI hardware).

But what are these creatures called AI PCs? Are they mutants or a new species altogether?

WHAT'S AN AI PC? WHAT'S STRAPPED INSIDE?