Summary

  • 2 minutes

As AI becomes an increasingly important part of the Windows experience, understanding how AI workloads use device hardware can help organizations investigate performance, efficiency, and resource utilization. Windows Task Manager extends familiar monitoring capabilities to AI processing resources, helping organizations gain visibility into how AI-enabled applications interact with device hardware.

In this module, you explored Microsoft's concept of unmetered intelligence and how local AI processing can make better use of hardware already available on employee devices. You learned how CPUs, GPUs, GPU neural engines, and NPUs contribute to AI acceleration, and why understanding where workloads run is important for interpreting AI activity.

You also explored the AI-related metrics available in Windows Task Manager and how those metrics can be used to monitor hardware utilization, memory consumption, and processing activity. By combining information from the Processes, Performance, and Details tabs, you can investigate whether workloads are using their intended processing paths or evaluate when additional investigation may be needed.

Finally, you examined how hardware utilization can influence performance, power consumption, battery life, and the overall user experience. As organizations adopt more AI-enabled applications and move toward a future of unmetered intelligence, visibility into AI workload execution can help them better understand how those applications use device resources and deliver value to users.

Important

Key takeaways

Now that you’ve completed the module, you should be able to answer “yes” to all of the following statements.

  • I understand why it’s useful to monitor AI workload activity on supported Windows devices.
  • I understand how AI workloads can use CPUs, GPUs, GPU neural engines, and NPUs.
  • I understand how Windows Task Manager provides visibility into AI workload activity on supported devices.
  • I recognize that AI-related metrics can help identify how applications are using available AI hardware.
  • I understand how Task Manager can help identify potential workload fallback scenarios.
  • I understand how AI hardware utilization can affect performance, power consumption, and battery life.