AI PCs to gain speed, cut cloud costs - and help workers upskill

"Windows PCs have faced death threats for decades from a variety of rival devices, including tablets, Macs, Linux computers, and other hardware. But the rise of Ai in recent years could be helping to revive interests in PCs as company's contemplate upgrades in the near future, The first " AI PCs" were introduced amid much fanfare in 2024, and shipments are growing. But enterprises that picked up early AI PCs have been stymied in their embrace of the technology as meaningful offline applications haven't yet materialized."

""We're aware that AI workloads, while they're moving to the edge, [that's] not going to happen overnight..., but that's changing," Jim Johnson, senior vice president, general manager, Client Computing Group at Intel, said during a keynote address at the last week's CES trade show."

"By late this year and early 2027, enterprises will have more applications to work with on AI PCs; that could reduce cloud costs and provide a path for employees to upskill in AI, said Zach Noskey, director of portfolio strategy and product management at Dell. "The initial investment in AI PCs can be offset by long-term savings in cloud service fees, improved productivity, and enhanced security," he said."

AI PCs launched in 2024 and shipments are growing, but enterprises have not yet realized widespread offline AI applications. Early AI PC adopters still rely mainly on cloud-based AI services because current PC AI chips are not yet fast enough for many large local workloads. New chips and enabling software are arriving to speed on-device inference and run larger models. Vendors expect more enterprise-ready on-device applications by late this year into 2027, which could lower cloud costs, improve productivity, enhance security, and create AI upskilling opportunities for employees.

Read at Computerworld