News briefing

 

The American consumer electronics show, CES, is set to be held in Las Vegas on January 9th, US time. Major domestic manufacturers such as Asus, Acer, MSI, Gigabyte, and others will exhibit their new AI PC products. Foreign companies like Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, and LG, will also showcase their related products. Among the array of new products on display, there will be offerings encompassing consumer, and commercial, as well as e-sports product lines, marking the start of the "First year of AI PC" in 2024.

 

Impact analysis

 

The performance of the global PC market in 2023 is considered unsatisfactory, with overall shipments dropping to 250 million units, reflecting a 13.8% decline from 2022. Since the waning of the epidemic dividend in 2021, the global PC market has experienced a decline for two consecutive years. Besides being affected by inflation and component inventory pressure, the PC industry, as a trade of the mature market, continues to struggle to find some new momentum for growth. However, AI has emerged as the new-generation savior of the technology industry following the emergence of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. With the rapid development of AI technology, its application scope has, as well, expanded from the cloud to terminal devices, and AI PC is considered one of them. In 2023, AMD and Intel successfully launched new generation processors, which integrate NPU (Neural Processing Unit) into the architecture. Under the new architecture, the CPU will be responsible for task scheduling and computing, the GPU for parallel computing and graphics rendering, and the NPU will specialize in processing AI-related calculations to provide enhanced computing power and performance support.

 

Nonetheless, consumer-oriented AI PCs, constrained by limitations in computing power requirements, energy consumption, and heat dissipation, cannot yet reach the performance level of large-scale commercial AI models. They would still require AI servers and cloud services before they can truly experience and attain comprehensive AI applications. Even so, if the focus is on "light office" applications, such as word processing, image generation, and others, AI PCs can significantly improve productivity. This is why major brand manufacturers have promoted them as a key selling point, aiming to trigger a wave of machine change. In addition, the new processor architecture of AI PC has, as seen in its product specifications, introduced small chip design and 3D heterogeneous packaging technology. This not only increases the demand for ABF substrates and high-end HDI motherboards but also promotes the utilization of high-frequency and high-speed materials. As a result, it is anticipated that this application will serve as a major driving force for the growth of the PCB industry this year.