Intel and Microsoft seem to be hinting at Windows 12

It appears that both Intel and Microsoft are preparing for Windows 12. which has yet to be announced @employee, which is known for revealing full specifications of Intel Xeon chips before launch, published details about Intel’s Meteor Lake desktop platform. Intel is said to state internally that next-gen CPUs will support Windows 12.

While the tweet has since been deleted, Cards video notes Meteor Lake 20 is expected to include a PCIe Gen5 lane and support for Windows 12. We asked Intel for comment on the leak, but the company declined. Microsoft also declined to comment on reports of Intel preparing support for Windows 12.

Although Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans for Windows 12, there are already signs that the company is looking to future versions of Windows to incorporate AI-powered features. Youssef Mahdi, Head of Consumer Marketing at Microsoft, said in an interview with the edge earlier this week.

Mehdi was discussing the latest Windows 11 update that integrates the new AI-powered version of Bing into the taskbar. This update also includes recommended AI-powered content within the Start menu for business users. Microsoft is also reportedly working on an AI-powered device Smart Snap features for Windows 11.

Mehdi’s comment follows Windows President Panos Panay’s claim at CES earlier this year that “artificial intelligence will reinvent how you do everything on Windows.” The Microsoft Surface team has also been hinting at how AI can change how we use computers. Stephen Bathish, President of the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft, said in an interview with Microsoft the edge last year.

If Microsoft is indeed planning for its next version of Windows to use AI more broadly, it will need to work closely with hardware partners like Intel and AMD to improve chips that can handle AI workloads. This may explain why Intel has already mentioned Windows 12 internally.

AMD recently launched its Ryzen 7000 processors for mobile devices, and boasted that they are the first x86 chips to feature a custom AI engine that can support Microsoft Windows Studio effects. These features, including background noise removal and eye contact, are usually only available to ARM devices that can operate the features with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU). So it’s clear that AMD and Microsoft are laying the groundwork for more AI-powered features in traditional Windows laptops.

However, Intel will not be far behind in the AI ​​front. Meteor Lake, expected later this year or early 2024, is a significant step for Intel, as it will be built on the company’s 4 (7nm) Intel node and will be its first “chiplet” design, with separate dies for CPU cores and integrated graphics. and input / output. It will also include Similar AI capabilities to those offered by AMD on the Ryzen 7000 mobile processors.

AMD and Intel are fighting to catch up with Apple and its latest M2 chipset, which has a dedicated AI chip that can handle 15.8 trillion operations per second — 40 percent more than the M1. Apple uses a Core ML platform Run machine learning models on MacBooks to speed up tasks for voice recognition, image processing, and more. All of this is energy efficient, as it uses a dedicated NPU instead of hitting the CPU and GPU.

Microsoft is also said to have gone back to a three-year release cycle for Windows last year, which means the next major release of Windows may be due in 2024 — good timing for some new CPUs. Microsoft originally broke away from the three-year cycle with the release of Windows 10 in 2015, prioritizing the idea of ​​Windows as a service. Windows 11 then marked the end of the idea that Windows 10 could be “the last version of Windows.”

Microsoft is also starting to focus on updating Windows 11 much faster than the big annual updates it originally promised when the operating system launched in 2021. The software maker delivered its latest big update to Windows 11 earlier this week, with Bing powered by intelligence. Added taskbar, improvements to widgets, better touch mode, screen recording feature, and much more.