Huawei says it will start selling PCs powered by Intel's AI chip | Hacker News Reader

Huawei says it will start selling PCs powered by Intel's AI chip

asia.nikkei.com

24 pointsrntn12 comments

“Dubbed the MateBook X Pro, the new PC will run on the HarmonyOS and use the Pangu Large Language Model developed by Huawei.”

The most interesting thing is that they are abandoning windows - hopefully they will also abandon Intel at one point.

>they are abandoning windows

Huh. I wonder what web browsers run on HarmonyOS. The word "browser" does not appear in the OP, on https://www.harmonyos.com/en/ or on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS.

I am sure it has a browser built in - probably a chrome derivative.

They use ArkWeb for the native browser [0]

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArkWeb

Note that this seems inaccurate. Early reviews on Bilibili indicate a modified (better OLED pixel rendering) Windows 11 as the primary OS. HarmonyOS PC is apparently in the works. Mildly disappointed they're not going with Linux ofc.

The title is completely irrelevant (consumer chips are not blocked, and they've been using Intel chips for ages, they have a license for it too).

What's amazing are the specs. 4K 120Hz OLED with <2dE in sRGB, Adobe, and P3 Weight of 980g (compared to ~1220 Macbook Air). Meanwhile, the Air is also passively cooled, while this laptop has active cooling rated for 40W. ~70wH battery compared to around 52.6wH Air.

I don't like shilling, but this is definitely some amazing technology for a thin-and-light laptop.

The matebook needs a bigger battery for the same reason that it isn’t actively cooled; the processor turns a lot of electricity into heat.

I don’t particularly care about 300 grams, but some people might. If I had to guess based on past matebooks though, the Apple build quality will explain that 300 grams.

Yes and no, Intel's Meteor lake is a significant step up in efficiency, obviously not quite Apple's M-series level yet, but the performance is better with graphics and CPU.

The weight argument's fair. I carry around a relatively heavy Framework the whole day, and I don't particularly mind. That said, the chassis is high-grade magnesium, not exactly plastic.

That the air is passively cooled and this is actively cooled is a big downside. Active cooling is only needed because of higher power use and with the performance gains they are talking about that's not seeming to come from having the same efficiency but allowing more performance. And of course active cooling itself increases power use too.

Having an OLED screen is pretty kickass though. At the price point I'm not sure how amazing that really comes out to be. On one hand OLED will help counteract some of the power inefficiencies and will give solid contrast but on the other it'll also be dimmer than mini LED type screens.

That's a bit like saying the fact that the MacBook Pro is actively cooled is a downside. For any workflow other than Facebook browsing I'm relatively sure you want active cooling unless you want to lose half your performance after a few minutes. OFC the efficiency is far far subpar to the M-lineup (really amazing perf/watt there). I just found it interesting engineering! It's probably the highest thermal pocket I've seen in this form-factor!

That the MacBook Pro is actively cooled would definitely be a downside against a similar option that isn't. (MacBook Pro owner here).

Also the MacBook Pro takes a lot more than a step above browsing for a couple minutes to actually kick the fans on :)

https://archive.md/DBHQ9

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