Microsoft held a conference call today to announce important news about the Windows operating system and related hardware. The company focused primarily on artificial intelligence and its use, but an important point was also the ARM architecture, its support in Windows and the release of Snapdragon X processors. The event was not broadcast live, but information about it was reported, for example. , The Verge magazine.
Co-pilot+
Let’s start with AI. Microsoft has introduced a sort of “Copilot+” specification to designate devices that will be able to take advantage of new features based on machine learning. All PC and laptop users today are out of luck anyway.
The new features will require a powerful NPU (AI computing unit), and according to MS, only the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus processors, which will soon hit the market in the first laptops, meet the requirements.
Processors from Intel and AMD will also appear, but later, probably with the advent of the Lunar Lake (Intel) and Strix Point (AMD) architectures. In any case, both will only be used for laptop chips, so the question is when these features will appear on desktop computers.
Revoke
So what’s new? First of all, this is the Recall function. It records everything you do on your computer, and then you can return to the information, essentially remembering what you did. You can navigate through the story using the timeline.
In addition to the above NPU requirement, Recall also has storage requirements. Specifically, you must have a hard drive with a capacity of at least 256 GB and at least 50 GB of free space. The base volume is 25 GB, which should be enough for about three months of use, after which the history will be deleted.
AI assistant for games and other applications
Microsoft continues to expand the capabilities of its AI assistant Copilot, which will now provide hints in Settings or in File Explorer. It should also find use in video games. The company demonstrated a feature in Minecraft where, for example, the player can ask the AI how to make a sword. The co-pilot will find suitable raw materials in your inventory and help you create them. By the way, the AI assistant will switch to the recently introduced GPT-4o model from OpenAI.
Okay, this is wild. Microsoft is showing off a demo where you can use AI to play and understand a video game in real time #microsoftevent pic.twitter.com/nMNinN1wLe
— Rich DeMuro (@richontech) May 20, 2024
Super resolution
Auto Super Resolution is also one of the new features. Own upscaling, which was written about earlier. It will have applications in games and videos, so it must be a technology that works at the system level. However, this hasn’t been specifically confirmed, and it’s a little surprising that Microsoft’s FAQ only mentions support for certain games, such as Resident Evil 2, Control, or God of War.
But if it is true that this is system-level scaling, the quality will not be nearly as good as using DLSS, FSR or XeSS technologies. This scaling fails to separate the rendered image from the user interface, which can cause annoying artifacts.
Live subtitles
The latest big news is improved real-time subtitles, which will show you the translation of the content you’re currently watching into the language you want (including Czech).
Windows on ARM
The second important topic was the ARM architecture, or rather its support in the Windows operating system. It’s not very good so far, and Microsoft is looking to improve it. For example, native support for DaVinci Resolve, programs from Adobe and other applications will be added. The rest will still have to be run through emulation.
Snapdragon X Elite/Plus
As mentioned, AI features are currently limited to the new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, which will hit the market in a few weeks. Although Qualcomm has made chips for laptops before, this is the first major attempt to break into this market and displace not only Intel and AMD (both companies use the x86 architecture), but also Apple, which switched to ARM several years ago. Qualcomm has a long history of making SoCs for mobile phones and its Snapdragons have a relatively dominant position in the market, so we’ll see how the American company does on PCs.
Microsoft Surface
In addition to the unveiling of new laptops from traditional manufacturers, we also saw two new products directly from Microsoft, namely the much improved Surface Laptop and Surface Pro. Both devices will feature an OLED display and, of course, a Snapdragon X Plus or Elite processor. There are already first impressions of their use, for example they were suggested by Dave2D. The new Surface devices are now available for pre-order.
Source :Indian TV
