An enthusiast found out that the new Recall program in Windows 11 does not require a neural processing unit (NPU) in the processor. Recall functions are recording everything that happens on your PC to recover or search for data. However, the program did not work on a conventional x86-x64 processor, but on a PC with an older Snapdragon 7c+ processor.
According to the official hardware requirements, Recall requires Copilot+ PC with 16 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, and an NPU chip with 40+ TOPS performance. Currently, only Snapdragon X Elite and Plus PCs meet these requirements.
Making great progress enabling Recall on current Arm64 hardware, no fancy X Elite in sight! ✨
Should theoretically work on Intel/AMD too, OEMs only received Arm64 specific ML model bundles so there’s not much I can do yet.Here’s a small demo video showing off screenray 🪄 pic.twitter.com/w57fF1LxiN
— Albacore ☁️ (@thebookisclosed) May 23, 2024
The program did not work on a system with a regular processor because it tried to load an AI model for x64 that did not exist. So, an old computer with a Snapdragon 7c+ ARM processor was needed. Recall’s core technology ran successfully on it without a separate NPU chip, although a neuroprocessor is required for some tasks.
The Recall program is only included in Windows 11 24H2 Build 26100.712, which was recently released to testers, but it is hidden. Even if you open Recall, the AI integration won’t work because x64 models are not yet available.
The Windows 11 Recall integration first checks whether the PC has an NPU. In the program, you can choose which hardware to run the AI on, if necessary. In the case of this Snapdragon 7c+ PC, Recall relied on the CPU.
Recall will be able to run on existing Intel and AMD systems without NPU chips, but we will have to wait until x64 AI is released. Although NPUs are not required for Recall, Microsoft may not want to enable these features for graphics cards or other hardware capable of processing the model.
Source: Windows Latest