This is taking a laptop CPU and stuffing it in a handheld. The laptop CPU already has the npu and removing it would require a new SKU which would cost money for special handling for packaging, new firmware, new drivers, and probably more costs I haven’t considered. You would save on the silicon but unless they have high volume, removing the npu is likely more expensive.
They will likely try to leverage AI to reduce rendering like AMD. I suspect this is literally announced to show that Intel is still relevant and to prevent more bleeding from that company. They did similar when Apple dropped them. Rather than make better chips, they released a mass marketing push to show they were every bit as good as Apple silicon if not better.
Absolutely not. This thing is going to perform horribly because half the processor die is dedicated to something nobody’s gonna use.
If this were a business laptop then I’d understand adding AI. But this is a gaming handheld, how the hell will this help?
It has an NPU, so should see no performance loss from AI. The opposite is probably true, it’ll be fast at AI and more efficient.
The silicon needed for the npu causes the price to be higher than it needs to be
This is taking a laptop CPU and stuffing it in a handheld. The laptop CPU already has the npu and removing it would require a new SKU which would cost money for special handling for packaging, new firmware, new drivers, and probably more costs I haven’t considered. You would save on the silicon but unless they have high volume, removing the npu is likely more expensive.
Fair point.
They will likely try to leverage AI to reduce rendering like AMD. I suspect this is literally announced to show that Intel is still relevant and to prevent more bleeding from that company. They did similar when Apple dropped them. Rather than make better chips, they released a mass marketing push to show they were every bit as good as Apple silicon if not better.