Will Microsoft require a neural processing unit (NPU) for future Windows installs?

I would consider Windows 11 ever requiring a NPU to be unlikely. Some optional features might require it, but not the OS itself.

Windows 12, on the other hand? It's anyone's guess.

I certainly hope not. Nothing about current "AI" service offerings suggests a need for consumer-level hardware to execute. The first Windows deployment that specified a GPU system requirement, Vista, came eight years after the first GeForce. Shoveling NPUs on consumers should rightly get them rebuffed this early in the game because "AI" isn't even useful yet nor has any bullshit VC peddler of this stuff earned the kind of trust to execute, Microsoft especially. Looking at you, Replay. (As always, market, irrationality, solvency, etc)

I mean, it was 6 years between the release of Windows 10 and the release of Windows 11.

Windows 11 was only released about 2 and a half years ago.

If any of the rumours about Windows 12 landing this fall are legit (WTF?! I just noticed that was a thing), then take everything I wrote and increment the versions.

CPX said:

I certainly hope not. Nothing about current "AI" service offerings suggests a need for consumer-level hardware to execute. The first Windows deployment that specified a GPU system requirement, Vista, came eight years after the first GeForce. Shoveling NPUs on consumers should rightly get them rebuffed this early in the game because "AI" isn't even useful yet nor has any bullshit VC peddler of this stuff earned the kind of trust to execute, Microsoft especially. Looking at you, Replay. (As always, market, irrationality, solvency, etc)

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I guess you meant Recall?

Windows 11 has a minimum system requirement, and a feature specific one:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications#table1

I am guessing you will always be able to run Windows 11 on the computer that you already have, but Windows 12 might come with different system requirements.

hinduclient said:

That's my question ... seeing the resistance to new hardware for W11, will folks replace TWICE to appease Microsoft, or just wait for W12? Either way it's a fustercluck.

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Linux is certainly getting new wind these days. I migrated to Linux completely myself recently after testing it for a long time on an old junker (which i am typing from now) due to said "Recall" feature that is upcoming, although that has a a CPU and storage requirement for it to be enabled.

Made in Hurry said:

I guess you meant Recall?

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Yeah, apologies, Recall. I read a few paragraphs of the Ars article on it before I balked at the very concept.

Made in Hurry said:

Windows 11 has a minimum system requirement, and a feature specific one:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications#table1

I am guessing you will always be able to run Windows 11 on the computer that you already have, but Windows 12 might come with different system requirements.

Linux is certainly getting new wind these days. I migrated to Linux completely myself recently after testing it for a long time on an old junker (which i am typing from now) due to said "Recall" feature that is upcoming, although that has a a CPU and storage requirement for it to be enabled.

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Microsoft is also aggressively pushing Copilot "AI" bullshit so I wouldn't put it past them to arbitrarily designate an NPU requirement for the consumer OS and play the same upgrade fuck fuck games with the Windows 11 minimum system requirement.

CPX said:

Yeah, apologies, Recall. I read a few paragraphs of the Ars article on it before I balked at the very concept.



Microsoft is also aggressively pushing Copilot "AI" bullshit so I wouldn't put it past them to arbitrarily designate an NPU requirement for the consumer OS and play the same upgrade fuck fuck games with the Windows 11 minimum system requirement.

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It seems Microsoft and others are going all in on the NPU, pretty soon both Intel and AMD has products that will be compliant with the requirements, but that probably means that Windows 12 is coming next year if that is a hard requirement.

The CoPilot+ launch of compatible computers seems to launch on June 18th of this year over here with Snapdragon Elite CPU's in the $1500+ range.

Ardax said:

I mean, it was 6 years between the release of Windows 10 and the release of Windows 11.

Windows 11 was only released about 2 and a half years ago.

If any of the rumours about Windows 12 landing this fall are legit (WTF?! I just noticed that was a thing), then take everything I wrote and increment the versions.

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They were pushing the "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows" schtick during most of that time, so they had some reason to keep that brand name for a while. Windows 8 and 8.1 had quite short periods between their releases and then to Windows 10. XP to Vista was 6 years (XP being the first consumer NT version makes it sort of an outlier), then Vista didn't last all that long until 7, and 8 was only a few years later. The "popular lifetimes" of XP and 7 were extremely long. Windows 10 is exceptionally long in feature/function support, but they had that "last version" thing giving them a reason to keep creating "new versions" that were still Windows 10 when they otherwise would have wanted to call it Windows 11. The normal release cadence would make Windows 12's time of release pretty close.

I can't imagine requiring NPUs for the OS for at least 5 years, because that would just wipe out too much perfectly functional hardware support too quickly. If they do it in 5 years, that would mean setting a requirement for CPUs that have just been released now, mid-2024, as they are the first x86 CPUs to meet the very minimum NPU performance requirements Microsoft set, and that would match Windows 11's release which officially required CPUs that were only 5 years old (8th Gen Core essentially). Even that might be too early, as the performance needs of whatever AI shit they include will likely be even higher by then and today's NPUs may not be good enough. They need to reach a point in the software where the requirements aren't so high that they have to cut off CPU support to a point that is too recent.

And of course it all depends on whether the consumer AI bullshit trend actually goes anywhere. In a couple of years we may see that it was just an attempt to force something on consumers that they didn't want and weren't willing to use even when they were being forced to pay for it in terms of software development cost and hardware support that wasn't optional.

I totally get why you would like to know. Hell I'd like to know, too. But I until Microsoft releases any information about Windows 12, all any of us can do is speculate.

Unless Microsoft simply does not care about the installed customer base and assumes that people will just upgrade and throw away their hardware as it has been a few years since people emptied shops during Covid. I am sure Microsoft and everyone else is going to push the AI drivel to a new level before the EOL of WIndows 10 for sure, and mom and pop is going to buy whatever they're told. I assume the marketing will be just turned to 11 starting from this summer.

I have no idea how things is going to look in a year, but there is going to be chaos for sure

I would think that the pushback has been significant. No company with trade secrets (lots of them) or regulated for security (HIPAA, for example) is going to be able to buy those machines if they can't at least turn it off permanently. The EU may yet help us out because I highly doubt our government will.

I'm running Windows 11 just fine on 10 year old hardware so if they do 'require' an NPU, I'll likely ignore that requirement as well until I find a way that it actually benefits me.

I had to share this though:
"TotalRecall has been updated to exfiltrate Recall database and screenshots without needing admin rights"

Paladin said:

I'm running Windows 11 just fine on 10 year old hardware so if they do 'require' an NPU, I'll likely ignore that requirement as well until I find a way that it actually benefits me.

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The only way you're doing that is by using workarounds that Microsoft knowingly left in place, to allow people who are somewhat knowledgeable to still use Windows rather than switching to Linux if they absolutely refused to upgrade their Windows hardware, while eliminating the requirement for them to provide any real support and letting them ignore any compatibility issues that might later arise. With 24H2, that workaround may become completely impossible for processors that it currently works on as there is an underlying CPU feature requirement for the OS that isn't available at all in older CPUs and therefore the basic OS code may not run (SSE4). (A 10 year old CPU has it, but there are some that can run W11 using the workaround right now which won't be able to run 24H2.) They have decided that supporting older code paths is no longer of enough benefit versus implementing new code and functionality in the OS (just like Linux is dropping support for the 486).

If they decide that an NPU and the AI features in Windows 12 or Windows 14 (they'll skip 13 or change the numbering scheme entirely) are a "core requirement" the way SSE4 is now, then at some point they'll probably only officially support processors with NPUs that are higher performance than the current newest ones (which on x86 barely meet the minimum specs MS has set) so probably 2025 and up, and the equivalent of the W11 workaround will allow you to install it on 2024 processors like Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake, or perhaps if your GPU can run AI, but it won't be "supported", and it might not install at all, period, on anything older.

hinduclient said:

I wanted Windows 11 so discarded a perfectly good cpu and MB for a Intel Core i5-12400 w 32 GB ram. It's great for everything I do. I'm kind of hoping I can use it for quite some time. I used My i5 3400 for 10 years. Will Microsoft require an neural processing unit (NPU) at some time in the foreseeable future?

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Intel GNA launched 5 years ago on Icelake "AI PCs" and while it's still shipping in Meteor Lake, software support is minimal and most people here probably have forgotten it exists. Given the slow uptake of AI hardware by developers I'm skeptical it's going to become mandatory anytime soon.

Lord Evermore said:

The only way you're doing that is by using workarounds that Microsoft knowingly left in place, to allow people who are somewhat knowledgeable to still use Windows rather than switching to Linux if they absolutely refused to upgrade their Windows hardware, while eliminating the requirement for them to provide any real support and letting them ignore any compatibility issues that might later arise. With 24H2, that workaround may become completely impossible for processors that it currently works on as there is an underlying CPU feature requirement for the OS that isn't available at all in older CPUs and therefore the basic OS code may not run (SSE4). (A 10 year old CPU has it, but there are some that can run W11 using the workaround right now which won't be able to run 24H2.) They have decided that supporting older code paths is no longer of enough benefit versus implementing new code and functionality in the OS (just like Linux is dropping support for the 486).

If they decide that an NPU and the AI features in Windows 12 or Windows 14 (they'll skip 13 or change the numbering scheme entirely) are a "core requirement" the way SSE4 is now, then at some point they'll probably only officially support processors with NPUs that are higher performance than the current newest ones (which on x86 barely meet the minimum specs MS has set) so probably 2025 and up, and the equivalent of the W11 workaround will allow you to install it on 2024 processors like Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake, or perhaps if your GPU can run AI, but it won't be "supported", and it might not install at all, period, on anything older.

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Yeah, the Core2duo I think is when it was introduced effectively so almost 20 years ago now (17 or so). I'm really not worried about actual hardware being obsolete for Windows 11/12 because stuff that old is getting impractical anyway. USB3 is missing, PCIe is even missing on some of it. My stuff that I still use with Windows 11 is more like 9-12 years old at most so I'm good for a few more years at least. If the whole NPU thing keeps up and actually becomes useful at some point, I am sure I will upgrade. I just haven't really seen any need. The geek in me wants new hardware but I keep coming back around to realizing it just doesn't do that much that I don't already have. It's faster sure, but not effectively that much faster for the day to day tasks I do.

Of course, if my machine suddenly died, I would have a good excuse to upgrade but so far it hasn't happened.

Paladin said:

The geek in me wants new hardware but I keep coming back around to realizing it just doesn't do that much that I don't already have. It's faster sure, but not effectively that much faster for the day to day tasks I do.

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PCs basically stopped being faster for everyday tasks several years ago. They're only really noticeably faster in tasks that use 100% of the CPU and a GPU for long periods, like games or rendering. Put enough RAM in a 5-year-old PC to match a current one, and matching SSDs, and you might be able to tell the difference but not by much while browsing the web or using office suites and certainly just watching videos, and even a 10-year-old upper-tier desktop would still be good enough to match a mid-range model from today (which is way overpowered for most tasks). The only real reason that upgrades are needed is software bloat, which seems to accelerate every year.

Yup, my last upgrades were a pair of bigger SSDs (OS install and user data) so my wife can store more pictures and videos and stuff (and a bigger NAS for backups etc.) and going from a GTX 760 to an RTX 3060 cause they finally got cheap enough that it was a no-brainer. Daily use is no different even though the new SSDs are technically a good bit faster on paper than the old ones, and the video card is at least twice as capable. Games are a bit better but not a whole new world. Everything else is basically the same, maybe a small improvement.

I'm sure if I went to a whole new machine, it would seem super fast for a few days and then you realize it's mostly just the fresh install that feels snappy. Once you have all your software installed again, things slow down a bit with all the registry bloat, etc.