Can your PC or Mac run on-device AI? This handy new Opera tool lets you find out

Date:
Fri, 07 Jun 2024 11:07:20 +0000

Description:
This is a cool idea from Opera, and the browser will rate your PC in terms of its local AI performance but theres a catch.

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Opera wants to make it easy for everyday users to find out whether their PC
or Mac can run AI locally, and to that end, has incorporated a tool into its browser.

When we talk about running AI locally, we mean on the device itself, using your system and its resources for the entire AI workload being done in contrast to having your PC tap the cloud to get the computing power to
achieve the task at hand.

Running AI locally can be a demanding affair particularly if you dont have a modern CPU with a built-in NPU to accelerate AI workloads happening on your device and so its pretty handy to have a benchmarking tool that tells you
how capable your hardware is in terms of completing these on-device AI tasks effectively.

There is a catch though, namely that the Is your computer AI ready ? test is only available in the developer version of the Opera browser right now. So,
if you want to give it a spin, youll need to download that developer (test) spin on the browser.

Once thats done, you can get Opera to download an LLM (large language model) with which to run tests, and it checks the performance of your PC in various ways ( tokens per second, first token latency, model load time and more).

If all that sounds like gobbledegook, it doesnt really matter, as after running all these tests which might take anything from just a few minutes to more like 20 the tool will deliver a simple and clear assessment of whether your machine is ready for AI or not.

Theres an added nuance, mind: if you get the ready for AI result then local performance is good, and not AI ready is self-explanatory you can forget running local AI tasks but theres a middle result of AI functional. This means your device is capable of running AI tasks locally, but it might be rather slow, depending on what youre doing. (Image credit: Opera)

Theres more depth to these results for experts, that you can explore if you wish, but its great to get an at-a-glance estimation of your PCs on-device AI chops. Its also possible to download different (increasingly large) AI models to test with, too, with heftier versions catering for cutting-edge PCs with the latest hardware and NPUs. Analysis: Why local AI processing is important

Its great to have an easily accessible test that anyone can use to get a good idea of their PCs processing chops for local AI work. Doing AI tasks locally, kept within the confines of the device, is obviously important for privacy
as youre not sending any data off your machine into the cloud.

Furthermore, some AI features will use local processing partly, or indeed exclusively, and weve already seen the latter: Windows 11s new cornerstone AI functionality for Copilot+ PCs, Recall , is a case in point, as it works totally on-device for security and privacy reasons. (Even so, its been
causing a storm of controversy since it was announced by Microsoft, but thats another story).

So, to be able to easily discern your PCs AI grunt is a useful capability to have, though right now, downloading the Opera developer version is probably not a hassle youll want to go through. Still, the feature will be inbound for the full version of Opera soon enough wed guess, so you likely wont have to wait long for it to arrive.

Opera is certainly getting serious about climbing the rankings of the best
web browsers by leveraging AI, with one of the latest moves being drafting in Google Gemini to help supercharge its Aria AI assistant . YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE... Opera One is a new AI-powered browser that aims to beat Chrome and Edge Opera can now block trackers with one click, and is keeping its free VPN service Operas new AI bot might tempt users away from Google Chrome



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/can-your-pc-or-mac -run-on-device-ai-this-handy-new-opera-tool-lets-you-find-out


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