And a cloud PC that's for AI agents only
Microsoft has created a new type of AI PC – the “Windows 365 AI-enabled Cloud PC”.
Readers may recall that in late 2023 the term “AI PC” entered common use to describe PCs packing a neural processing unit (NPU). Microsoft then decided to define a new term – the “Copilot+ PC” – to describe PCs it feels are well-suited to running its Copilot AI because their NPUs perform at 40 TOPS or more.
Now, Microsoft has defined the “AI-enabled Cloud PC” that appears not to have an NPU at all, as the company says they run on “all 8 vCPU Cloud PCs” in certain Azure regions under the Windows 365 cloudy PC service.
Some Windows 365 instance types that offer 8 vCPUs also include GPUs, so perhaps an AI-enabled Cloud PC can tap those accelerators.
Microsoft also says AI-enabled Cloud PCs “dynamically adapt compute power for more on-demand performance, streamed securely from the Microsoft Cloud.”
Cloud PCs for agents
Microsoft is all-in on AI agents, which it suggests as a fine new way to automate work – including the work people do on their PC.
The company has therefore created a cloudy PC just for agents.
Dubbed “Windows 365 for Agents,” Microsoft says the virtual PCs give agents a “secured, policy-controlled Cloud PC streamed from the Microsoft Cloud.”
Whatever they run on, AI-enabled Cloud PCs include Copilot, the “Click To Do” feature available on Copilot+ PCs, and AI-infused Windows Search.
The cloudy PCs are currently available only to members of the Windows Insider program who also sign up for Microsoft’s “Frontier Program” – a second early access scheme reserved for AI products.
Windows 365 is now Microsoft’s main virtual PC product, but Redmond still sells Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) – an offering that’s closer to traditional desktop virtualization. Microsoft brought AVD on prem a couple of years ago by allowing it to run on Azure Local, its latest cloud-in-a-box offering after it moved on from Azure Stack.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that AVD can run under Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere, physical Windows Servers, “or anywhere Arc-Enabled Servers can be deployed on-premises.” Arc is Microsoft’s cloudy server management tool.
The Register understands this means AVD can run in hybrid clouds, meaning users could run some virtual desktops on-prem but then spin some up in the Azure public cloud.
Nutanix said its participation in this scheme shows it is “expanding the possibilities for VDI, which will enable organisations to tailor their environments to meet business needs – without being locked into a single deployment model.” However, its offering is currently under development.
Citrix and Omnissa dominate the desktop virtualization market, and both allow their wares to run on-prem or in many clouds. Microsoft has now come down out of the cloud to compete with them. ®