Microprocessor Report June 2024 Review
PC AI TOPS Race, AR Packaging Advances
Author: David Macqueen
Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC demands started a chain of events that could shake up the PC world. Qualcomm was the first to market with a PC system-on-chip (SoC) with a neural processing unit (NPU) meeting the 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) requirement, which gave hope to the Windows on Arm (WoA) initiative. But x86 vendors AMD and Intel closely followed with higher-headline TOPS devices.
Intel had a busy month, pushing out the Gaudi 3 AI accelerator. It will compete with NVIDIA—although only with NVIDIA’s previous generation of AI accelerator, the H100. At Computex, AMD also announced its next generation of AI accelerator, the MX325X, an incremental upgrade on the previous generation with improved memory.
Advanced packaging is a significant industry trend, and augmented reality (AR) is a driving force for increased volumetric processing density and therefore denser and more-advanced packaging. New packaging technologies from TSMC were seen in the Apple Vision Pro R1 chip and an experimental SoC from Meta.
