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Intel teases Windows ‘refresh’ for 2024 amid Windows 12 launch rumors


Intel has announced a “Windows refresh” for 2024 that the company hopes will boost its sales. While Citi analyst conference Last month, Intel CFO David Zinsner discussed a Windows refresh next year and suggested that consumers could upgrade their PCs based on a new version of Windows.

“We actually think 2024 is going to be a pretty good year for customers, particularly with the Windows refresh,” Zinsner said at the Citi analyst conference on Sept. 6. “We still think the install base is quite old and requires an update. We believe next year could be the beginning given the Windows catalyst.”

Zinsner’s comments from a month ago were discovered by PC gamerand come months later References to Windows 12 have been leaked from internal Intel documents. Intel is reportedly preparing its Meteor Lake desktop platform for a next generation of Windows, expected to be called Windows 12.

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 has a chip that accelerates machine learning algorithms.
Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Intel has only officially announced mobile Meteor Lake chips so far, Arriving in December with a dedicated AI coprocessor inside. Meteor Lake is Intel’s first CPU with different chiplets for each component and the first on its Intel 4 process node. The addition of an AI coprocessor could be important given Microsoft’s push for AI features in Windows.

Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans for Windows 12, but there are signs that the company is hoping for future versions of Windows to incorporate AI-powered features. “As we begin developing future versions of Windows, we will think about other areas where AI should play a natural role in terms of experience,” Yusuf Mehdi, head of consumer marketing at Microsoft, said in a Interview with The edge earlier this year.

We also saw that Microsoft added it AI-powered Copilot directly in Windows 11 recently and are focusing heavily on AI during the recent Surface event. Microsoft also added a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) chip to its Surface Laptop Studio 2, only mentioning that it enables Windows Studio effects like direct eye contact and background noise removal. Microsoft appears to be quietly laying the groundwork for a greater focus on AI in Windows, and Windows 12 combined with a hardware refresh focused on AI coprocessors seems inevitable at this point.