A market research report by TrendForce found that Microsoft has made 16GB the minimum system requirement for artificial intelligence PCs. In 2024, the first "AIPCs" (PCs that provide on-device AI acceleration for several new features native to Windows 1123H2 (mainly Microsoft Copilot)) will be available. From the current point of view, Copilot has received great attention from Microsoft, which hopes to integrate artificial intelligence chatbots capable of automating and generating work into mainstream PCs.
Microsoft is even pushing for a dedicated Copilot button on PC keyboards, like the Start key on the Start menu. The company's biggest move with Copilot will be the 2024 launch of Copilot Pro, an AI assistant integrated with Office and 365 that the company plans to sell separately on a subscription basis.
In addition to cloud-based acceleration, Microsoft's various artificial intelligence capabilities will also rely on some basic hardware specifications for local acceleration. One of them is of course the NPU, which both Intel's AIBoost and AMD's Ryzen AI will launch with their latest mobile processors. Another requirement is memory. AI acceleration is a highly memory-sensitive operation, and LLM requires considerable fast and frequent access to memory. Therefore, the company has set 16GB as the minimum memory capacity not only for native acceleration but also for cloud-based CopilotAI features.
As a result, laptops in 2024 will have 16GB as the baseline memory specification; while commercial laptops will expand memory capacity to 32GB or even 64GB depending on organizational requirements. This development bodes well for the DRAM industry in particular.