Microsoft is preparing to unveil its vision of «AI PCs» next month at an event in Seattle. Informed sources said that Microsoft is confident that a series of new Windows laptops based on the Arm platform will outperform Apple’s M3-based MacBook Air both in terms of CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks.
Microsoft believes that Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will finally offer the performance it has been looking for to promote Windows on Arm much more aggressively. Microsoft is betting big on the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors, which will appear in a variety of Windows laptops this year, as well as in the latest consumer-facing Surface devices.
Microsoft is planning several demonstrations that will show these processors to be faster than the MacBook Air with the M3 chip in CPU workloads, AI acceleration, and even program emulation. Microsoft claims in internal documents that these new Windows PCs with AI will provide «faster program emulation than Rosetta 2» — the solution Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate programs compiled for Intel 64-bit processors to Apple’s own processors.
Program emulation has been a big problem for the Windows on Arm platform over the past decade. More than 2 years ago, Microsoft introduced x64 app emulation for Windows 11. This helps ensure that apps can run in Windows on Arm devices if there is no native ARM64 version. Native Arm apps are key to improving the performance of future Windows laptops on Arm. Google recently released its own ARM64 version of Chrome ready for these upcoming devices.
Microsoft is also reportedly planning to ship consumer models of its upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors instead of Intel’s Core Ultra chips, which are available in business versions.
It is also noted that Microsoft internally describes devices running on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors as «Copilot computers with next-generation artificial intelligence» (next-gen AI Copilot PCs). This is to distinguish them from existing PCs that run on the latest AMD or Intel Core Ultra chips. This new class of PCs will be the first to have access to new AI-powered Windows features, including AI Explorer, which lets you «retrieve everything you’ve ever seen or done on your» device.
These new systems will have improved video streaming features and access to Windows Studio effects for background blurring and more. Additionally, they will provide the ability to create images using AI models for free, as well as provide options that will allow Copilot to access your PC context to improve hints and answers.
Microsoft’s big presentation of AI PCs will take place on May 20, just one day before the annual Build developer conference.
Source: The Verge