The most powerful computer ever: Microsoft says Surface Laptop and Surface Pro will deliver the highest neural processing unit performance per watt using Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors

Microsoft has built a new compiler and kernel for Arm-based chips so that it can handle the new features of Windows. It’s a rework at the heart of Windows on Arm that should make it feel speedy to use and potentially unlock a new wave of AI features and apps.

The new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro will be underpinned by the two Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors fromQualcomm. The new chips purportedly help optimize performance and battery life, and power the new AI capabilities. It can deliver the highest neural processing unit performance per watt that’s up to 2.5 times faster than Apple’s M3 chip, and up to 5 times faster than the Intel Core Ultra 7. The company also says the Snapdragon X Elite, specifically, uses 60 percent less power while still matching peak CPU performance from its competitors. Microsoft says the new Surface devices are 58 percent faster with 20 percent longer battery life than the most advanced MacBook Air with M3.

These Copilot Plus PCs are equipped with a neural processing unit (NPU) from Qualcomm that hits 45 TOPS of compute for AI tasks. That results in more artificial intelligence task operations per watt than the MacBook Air M3 and Nvidia RTX 4060.

The executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer for Microsoft said during the briefing that they are going to have the most powerful PC ever. “In fact, it’s going to outperform any device out there, including a MacBook Air with an M3 processor, by over 50 percent on sustained performance.”

“Every once in a while you get the opportunity to work on something special, where the technology is changing and you’re on the verge of discovering something,” says Mehdi. “I think we might have one of those moments.”

Surface, Chrome, and M3: Artificial Intelligence and ARM on Arm: New Perspectives and Perspectives for Windows 11 and Beyond

We spent a lot of energy here. Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri says that they are now able to solve the problem with better energy, platform, and performance efficiency because of the ability of Prism to do that.

Fortunately for Microsoft, two major shifts have happened in recent years. First of all, most of the biggest apps now support Arm chips that are native to the native architecture of the apps. Second, Google and many other browser makers are moving to ARM64. A native version of Chrome launched recently, followed by Opera just last week. You won’t lose performance in your browser if it’s also ARM64 native. That is a big deal because we spend more time inside a browser now than ever before and that a lot of apps are web-based.

Microsoft believes 88 percent of the app minutes on the Copilot Plus PCs will be in native apps. It’s still working on closing that other 13 percent, but the Prism emulator will help in the meantime.

The Surface Copilot Plus PC was able to hit more than 20 hours in a test run by Microsoft, while the MacBook Air M3 was able to hit 17 hours. That is eight hours more than the Surface Laptop 5. This will be a major improvement for Windows laptops if the battery gains extend beyond basic web browsing.

More than 40 different artificial intelligence models are being integrated with Windows on Arm to allow for new experiences inside and for app developers. There are many models that will run in the background. These models will allow developers to bring in their own Artificial Intelligence experiences into their apps, and Microsoft uses them to measure their battery life.

Davuluri says that these open the doors for new possibilities. NPu give us the ability to run high performance workloads. Microsoft demonstrated its new Recall feature onstage today, which essentially allows you to time travel back to something you saw on your PC or were working on. This is all thanks to these AI models running in the background and cataloging everything you’re working on, so there’s an explorable timeline.

The Live Captions feature of Windows 11 is also getting AI-powered live translations to provide real-time translation of any video. Microsoft is also adding Auto Super Resolution to Windows 11, which automatically upscales games to improve frame rates and graphics resolution.

The 7th Surface Laptop, a New Computer with an Improved Numerical Naming Structure (The Surface Laptop is the 7th Edition)

The numerical naming structure has changed with the new Surface Laptop. It succeeds the Surface Laptop 5, but instead of being called the Surface Laptop 6, Microsoft is going with “editions” and for some reason is skipping number 6. So this Surface Laptop is the 7th Edition.