AI-Driven PCs: How Traditional Architecture and Smartphone-Style Chips Compare in the Creative and Gaming Sector

Apple and NVIDIA are currently leading the market for creative and gaming users as AI is making its way to PCs. According to a new report from Omdia, there are two main technology options for delivering AI inference on PCs: one involves a traditional PC architecture enhanced with a high-performance GPU, while the other is based on a smartphone-style system-on-chip with dedicated AI acceleration.

Omdia researchers developed various user personas to understand the different needs and performance requirements of users. The “Corporate Warrior” persona, which represents business users who heavily rely on collaboration tools and travel frequently, is the largest but least served by the current dominant players. Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs are targeting this persona to break back into the AI space, while Arm-based systems like Apple’s have an advantage with unified memory.

Unified memory is crucial for AI on PCs as it impacts the type of AI models that can be run and the performance level. Arm’s investment in its unified memory architecture since the 1980s gives it a significant edge in this space. The Omdia report covers technology, user personas, major silicon vendors, and PC OEMs and is available in Omdia’s Advanced Computing Intelligence Service.

As a journalist, I can say that Omdia is a technology research and advisory group within Informa Tech that provides actionable insights for organizations to make smart growth decisions. For more information about their services or to contact Fasiha Khan at [email protected], you can visit their website.