Recall, Microsoft's latest AI tool, has hit headlines that the Redmond software giant probably didn't intend. Recall, part of a collection of features that only Copilot+ PCs sport, also requires that the processor running the software has an NPU. But one ingenious coder is already getting it to work perfectly well on a basic PC that has no NPU at all.

NPU, or neural processing unit, is the latest hardware bandwagon, and AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm are all fighting to take ownership of the reins. The Core Ultra, Ryzen8040, and Snapdragon X processors all host a circuit system that can handle common operations used in AI routines.

One such application is Microsoft's Recall feature in Copilot+, which requires an NPU capable of 45TOPs (trillions of operations per 1 second).

At the moment, the only chip with that level of NPU is Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series, but Recall turns out that it doesn't need such performance at all, and in fact, it doesn't need NPU either. As Neowin reported, X user Albacore claims to have ported the application to run on a PC with 4GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 7C+Gen3 processor.

Sure, it has a "Qualcomm AI engine," but it's certainly not an NPU and boasts a peak performance of 6.5 TOPs — much lower than the 45TOPs that Microsoft claims are required for Copilot+.

At the moment, Albacore does not detail exactly how this was achieved, but will provide a tutorial on how to do it yourself in the future.One of the things worth noting is that Copilot+ only works with Arm-based processors at the moment, so x86 owners can either wait a while or do some serious coding on their own. This is because you need to perform the magic of creating a virtual machine.

Recall is an application using the DirectML API, just as all of Microsoft's AI tools let games draw clean graphics on GPUs using Direct3D or Vulkan, so with the right know-how, it should be possible to get any reasonable hardware to handle recall instructions. You must be a member of the group.

Pc sales are just starting to rise from a long slump, and with Windows11 still shunned across the computer market, Microsoft and hardware vendors have been looking for ways to rekindle the Pc world and get people to buy new systems.

AI and Npu were part of that plan, but as this nifty little porting project shows, there's nothing wrong with the hardware you already have.

After all, with NPU there's nothing that GPUs can't do, but it's small in size and has little power needed to work. Nvidia is certainly not a fan of Npu's current crop, and if the rumors that it will enter the PC market are true, then its hardware certainly does not have NPU.

When people realize that a generic GPU can do all the AI, the whole neural processing unit can disappear. If that happens, Microsoft should find another way for everyone to buy Windows11.