Taiwan -- On Thursday, Huawei Technologies, a Chinese company, introduced its first artificial intelligence-powered personal computer. The device will run an own operating system and be outfitted with Intel's most recent chipset.
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| MateBook X Pro: AI Chip for PCs |
The news is made in spite of the United States government's crackdown on the business, which has severely limited its access to cutting-edge American technology.
According to Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, the new PC, dubbed the MateBook X Pro, will utilise the Pangu Large Language Model created by Huawei and run on HarmonyOS. LLMs are strong artificial intelligence algorithms that may be used to translate text, create pictures that resemble human speech, and more.
The computer will be powered by Intel's Core Ultra 9 processor, the US company's first chipset created with state-of-the-art extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) equipment, according to Yu, who spoke at the company's spring product launch event.
Instead of depending on having access to AI servers in the cloud, Intel has positioned its Core Ultra processor as a requirement for a PC to perform AI tasks internally. The newest chipset connects the central and graphic processors among the four tiles via Intel's potent advanced packaging technology.
Although Yu stated that the MateBook X Pro was created with Huawei's Pangu LLM in mind, it is also capable of supporting models from other partners, including as iFlytek's Spark and Baidu's Ernie Bot.
The PC sector, which has experienced a significant decline since the second half of 2022, is dominated by artificial intelligence. Numerous manufacturers, including Lenovo, Acer, and Asustek Computer, are optimistic that the market would be stimulated by AI-enabled gadgets. By 2025, Intel expects to sell 100 million AI PCs running on its Core Ultra chip.
In China, Huawei has quickly gained ground in the notebook sector. Based on the most recent data from Canalys, as of the third quarter of 2023, it is the third-largest PC producer there, holding a 9% share. Huawei's plan to grow its HarmonyOS ecosystem includes notebooks.
According to the manufacturer, the computer employs cutting-edge flexible OLED screens that provide improved colour contrast and weight reduction. OLED screens are already a standard component of high-end smartphones, such as iPhones. Apple is investigating whether to use these kinds of displays on MacBooks in addition to seeking to include them in its iPads.
Yu claims that while editing 4K-resolution videos, the MateBook X Pro can do it 27% quicker than a MacBook Pro with Apple's M3 chip. The business claims that the MateBook X Pro weighs only 980 grammes, which is significantly less than the 1.6 kilogrammes of a 14-inch MacBook Pro.
According to Huawei, the computer can cost up to 14,999 yuan ($2,027) when it goes on sale in China on April 18.