The AI ​​PC went pro at MWC 2024 | Top Vip News

At the end of last year, Intel presented its new family of Intel Core Ultra processors, aimed at enabling the PC era with AI with the company’s first processor that has a built-in NPU. Following that launch in December, the company’s OEM customers introduced several systems that take advantage of Core Ultra’s capabilities. While some AI applications are still quite nascent, Intel is certainly one of the companies that can turn a new technology into a widely adopted new feature in the mass market.

At the just-concluded Mobile World Congress 2024 event, Intel once again showed off a host of new Intel Core Ultra-based PCs, along with its vPro professional technology aimed at bringing the AI-enabled PC to the enterprise. Two of Intel’s largest OEM partners, Dell and Lenovo, were front and center, introducing new business laptops with vPro and Core Ultra to enable the latest AI experiences in a professional environment.

Dell Laptop Deals with Intel Core Ultra

Dell introduced a range of commercial PCs at MWC 2024 that combine Intel Core Ultra and vPro. To start, Dell announced updates to its entire line of Latitude business laptops, which serve business users in many different models, moving them from the previous generation 3000 series to Dell’s flagship 9000 series nomenclature. The two-in-one Dell Latitude 9450 is what Dell claims to be the world’s smallest 14-inch business PC with mini-LED display technology; It’s also equipped with a new HDR webcam and Wi-Fi 7. Moving down the stack, the Latitude 7000 series comes in 13-, 14-, and 16-inch screen sizes and offers the two-in-one form factor as well as a 13-inch and 14-inch Ultralight models. Dell clearly has a lot of diversity within the 7000 series.

Two notable products in the family are the ultralight 7350 and 7450 laptops with Intel Core Ultra and 5 MP webcams. There is also a 7350 detachable model, which Dell claims to be the world’s most useful commercial detachable, inspired by Dell Project Moon. Moving further down the stack, the Latitude 5000 series offers AI capabilities in 13-, 14-, and 15-inch sizes, as well as a 13-inch two-in-one. At the bottom of the list is the (new) Latitude 3000 series, which still offers an entry point for users to transition to AI PCs. The Dell Latitude 7350 detachable will be available in the second quarter of 2024, while the rest of the Latitude lineup will be available in March.

The Precision line of laptops is Dell’s family of mobile workstations, which also received the Intel Core Ultra treatment, along with Nvidia’s latest generation of Ada GPUs. For the Dell Precision family, there are two performance levels: the 3000 series and the 5000 series. Dell offers 3490 and 3590 workstations with up to RTX 500 Ada graphics combined with Core Ultra, while the Precision 5490 and 5690 offer 14 and 16 inches with up to Nvidia’s RTX 5000.

Lenovo: ThinkPad and PC prototype

Not to be left out of the AI ​​PC trade party, Lenovo also announced a wide range of new laptops that take advantage of the new Core Ultra processors. Lenovo’s ThinkPad series is the spearhead of its business laptops, making up the majority of its new AI business PCs powered by Intel’s Core Ultra and vPro technologies. That said, not all PCs announced by Lenovo feature Intel Core Ultra; In particular, the ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 (AMD 14-inch) features AMD’s new 8040 Ryzen processor with AMD’s XDNA AI architecture. (For more information on AMD’s approach to the AI ​​PC, Check out this article I did in December..)

Lenovo’s T16 Gen 3 laptop features Core Ultra processors, but also employs Lenovo’s new improved repair capability thanks to the company’s collaboration with iFixit, whose representatives were present at the Lenovo booth during MWC 2024. Lenovo also announced an Intel version of the ThinkPad T14 with the Intel Core Ultra with vPro, and announced an Intel-based T14s Gen 5, which also features improved repairability through the iFixit partnership.

The T16 and T14s are at the heart of Lenovo’s ThinkPad line, which means Lenovo is taking the repairability of some of its most important products seriously. Ultimately, repairability is good for the user and the business because it reduces repair costs and keeps systems in use longer, which is inherently better than trying to recycle them.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X12 Gen 2 is a sleek system with a 3:2 aspect ratio clearly designed to compete with the Microsoft Surface. The X12 Gen 2 also features Intel Ultra U-Series processors and supports up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which should allow you to achieve significant productivity. It has a 5 MP front webcam and an infrared camera for Windows Hello. It also has an 8MP world camera for videos and photos, although the photo and video capture experience on Windows is missing. This system also continues an oddity I’ve seen recently on other ThinkPad systems: it has 4G LTE support, but no mention of 5G at all. While I understand that some companies may not be actively rolling out cellular services, it doesn’t make much sense to support 4G, given that many networks are deprecating 4G coverage and speeds.

Last but not least is Lenovo’s ThinkBook Project Crystal concept system, which received a lot of press at Mobile World Congress. This 17.3-inch laptop is already larger than most systems Lenovo currently markets. The company says it leverages a MicroLED transparent display technology to enable a completely transparent viewing experience. This achieves two things: it creates the potential for an AR display inside the laptop and means the screen could enable a completely bezel-less viewing experience, creating an even smaller footprint for such a large screen. This is still largely a concept, but one of the biggest sacrifices would probably be losing Windows Hello and a webcam, at least until Lenovo and its display partners figure out how to implement that technology with the new display.

Samsung Book4 Series

Following Dell and Lenovo’s upgrades to their systems with Intel Core Ultra processors, the Samsung Book4 PC family is quite similar in its iterative nature. There don’t seem to be any significant differences compared to the last generation, and Samsung continues its family of four devices that includes the Galaxy Book4, Book4 360, Book4 Pro 360, and Book4 Ultra. The Book 4 Pro is the only model that comes in 14- and 16-inch sizes, while the 360 ​​only comes in 15.6 inches and the Pro 360 and Ultra come in 16 inches. (These are all 2X AMOLED screens.) Once again, Ultra is the only SKU to offer the fastest Intel Ultra 9 185H series processor and Nvidia RTX discrete graphics. That said, it’s great to see Samsung enter the era of AI PCs with the rest of the PC OEMs, and it will be great to find out how these systems perform against the competition.

Ending

Intel and its partners were very present at MWC 2024 with a wide variety of commercial PCs recently refreshed with the new Core Ultra processors. The current focus of Intel and its partners is to update as many Intel Core Ultra systems as possible with AI without disturbing the rest of the formula too much. This means focusing on ensuring that Core Ultra-powered machines offer an improved overall experience with the added benefit of an integrated NPU for AI applications.

Intel’s vision is not entirely focused on NPUs, as it also sees other cores, including GPUs, CPUs, and ASICs, as playing critical roles for AI. That said, there’s no doubt that most developers, along with Intel’s competition, are focusing on the NPU portion of these processors for high-performance, energy-efficient AI applications. The CES AI tsunami has continued into MWC 2024, and frankly, I think we’ll continue to see AI at the center of most things this year, especially since almost every PC announced at both CES and MWC can considered a PC with AI. There are still more launches to come later this year, including those from Microsoft and Qualcomm, so there is still a lot to pay attention to as the market evolves and embraces local AI computing.