Microsoft’s new AI hub highlights apps that support NPUs

Applications that support the specialized AI chips on Copilot+ PCs have been rare, but Microsoft is looking to change that.

The company this week introduced an upgraded AI Hub that adds new programs to the Microsoft Store that will run on neural processing units (NPUs), the specialized processors in laptops designed to run AI-intensive programs.

The new AI Hub will “provide AI experiences” powered by a PC’s NPU, Microsoft said in a blog post.

The NPU is an ancillary chip to a computer’s CPU and GPU, and is more power efficient when running generative AI (genAI)-based tasks such as image recognition, content creation, and voice transcription.

“The NPU’s ability to offload these tasks from the CPU and GPU allows for faster, more efficient operation of the entire system,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PCs last year with NPUs to run genAI tools. The software maker mandated that Copilot+ PCs include NPUs and that the collective system performance reach 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second). The first handful of Copilot+ PCs included chips from Qualcomm and Intel, but the NPUs went largely unutilized.

Some of the apps in Microsoft’s AI Hub include Camo Studio, which speeds up visual effects when using a webcam. (System tests on a Dell XPS 13 laptop with a Qualcomm chipset showed the NPUs in action when the application was running.)

Microsoft has added apps to its App Store designed for AI PCs.
Microsoft

Microsoft wasn’t ready with NPU-powered applications last year, but decided to launch the Copilot+ laptops — also called AI PCs — with NPUs, said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at FeibusTech.

The company had a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma of whether to launch the hardware or software first, and moved ahead with the hardware.

The NPU-centric applications could make AI PCs a bit more enticing for buyers, Feibus said. “You have to give developers an ROI reason to develop applications for AI PCs. More PCs with NPUs make it more and more valuable,” he said.

But Microsoft will need a much larger catalog of apps to convince buyers to spend money on Copilot+ PCs, Feibus said.

Microsoft requires an NPU for its highly touted Recall feature, which stumbled out of the gate following delays related to security concerns, Feibus said.

Dell is seeing more developers building applications tuned for NPUs.  

“The recent announcements and additions coming to the Copilot+ roadmap also drive more value — things like Click to Do and semantic search will have a big impact on user productivity,” a Dell spokeswoman said via email.

Microsoft had no additional comment about the new AI Hub. 

Qualcomm and Intel are independently encouraging developers to write apps for NPUs. Intel provides developer tools, while Qualcomm has its own AI Hub for developers to write applications for its Snapdragon chipset. 

“Qualcomm supports models from leading AI frameworks enabling developers to work with the model format of their choice and get it up and running on Snapdragon’s NPU. Model formats include ONNX, PyTorch, and TensorFlow Lite,” a Qualcomm spokeswoman said in an emailed comment.