HP Inc. is calling its recently unveiled OmniBook Ultra laptop the “world’s most capable AI PC,” and to achieve that, the company said it has entered into a “deep co-engineering” partnership with AMD to push the computer’s neural processing unit to new heights.
The PC and printer giant said Monday that the 14-inch laptop, slated for release in August, will use AMD’s new processor. Ryzen AI 300 Series Processors and push the processor’s neural processing unit (NPU) up to 55 trillion operations per second (TOPS), which will allow the PC to run AI workloads faster and more workloads simultaneously.
The consumer-oriented OmniBook Ultra was among a handful of announcements HP made at its Imagine AI event in New York on Thursday, where the company showcased several independent software vendors, including Cephable and Zoom, that are taking advantage of the NPU to deliver new AI-powered experiences available for AI PCs now or later this year.
At the event, Alex Cho, president of personal systems at HP, said the integration of AI technologies into applications, operating systems and hardware systems represents a “tremendous shift” that will empower people, enabling “better decision-making, better analytics and exceptional creativity accessible to all.”
“In our time, our vision is to enable people to harness the power of AI and transform the way they think about work and [how they are] “We connect with other people and get things done. And that’s not only to be more productive, but also to be a catalyst for employee growth and more rewarding work experiences,” he said.
With the OmniBook Ultra pushing 55 TOPS via the Ryzen AI 300 chip’s NPU, it pushes AI performance beyond the 50 TOPS maximum AMD previously disclosed for the NPU in the new processor series, which also includes a CPU and GPU.
According to HP, the OmniBook Ultra’s NPU performance is 45 percent better than Apple’s recently launched M4 system-on-chip, which is available in the latest iPad Pro, and nearly twice as good as the company’s M3 chip, which is available in several Mac computers.
This is also higher than Qualcomm’s recently launched 40 TOPS NPU performance Snapdragon X processorswhich power the HPs new OmniBook X and EliteBook Ultra laptops.
Cho called it a “unique” differentiator for HP and said it was part of a broader effort by the company to optimize various software and hardware components for its PCs.
“We organize the stack from the silicon, the BIOS, [operating systems]applications, I/O, etc. And do this deep co-engineering with [AMD] “This has allowed us to deliver a level of performance above the rest of the industry,” he told CRN US last Thursday.
An AMD spokesperson told CRN US that HP has reached out to the chip designer to boost the NPU performance of its Ryzen AI 300 series.
“Through close co-engineering, AMD and HP have developed a custom solution enabling 55 TOPS on the Ryzen AI 300 series for the OmniBook Ultra,” the representative said.
As for other features, the OmniBook Ultra supports up to 21 hours of battery life, the new HP AI Companion app to enable greater productivity and AI-based system tuning, a high-resolution 9-megapixel AI-enabled camera, and, for the first time on an HP consumer notebook, the company’s Wolf Security endpoint protection software.
HP said the laptop will support Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC experiences when an update becomes available from the operating system giant. This differs from HP’s Snapdragon X-based EliteBook Ultra and OmniBook X laptops, which supported Copilot+ at launch.
The new OmniBook and EliteBook laptops represent the second wave of AI PCs to come out of HP after the company’s debut in March Business laptops and mobile workstations which are part of what he calls the “largest” AI PC portfolio in the industry.