Microsoft (MSFT.O) will make a number of consumer electronics-related hardware and software announcements on Monday at an event held at its Redmond, Washington, campus.
A new iteration of the Surface Pro tablet and Surface laptop using Qualcomm (QCOM.O) chips based on Arm Holdings’ (O9Ty.F) architecture is anticipated to be unveiled by the Windows maker.
Following decades of dominance by Intel’s (INTC.O) processors in the personal computer business, Qualcomm and other manufacturers of lower-power Arm components have attempted to enter the Windows-PC market.
A feature of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips is a “neural processing unit,” which is intended to speed up AI-focused programs like Microsoft’s Copilot software.
Attendance in person by journalists and industry analysts is permitted at Microsoft’s product event, which takes place one day prior to the commencement of its annual developer conference. It’s not going to be broadcast live.
Microsoft wants to maintain its lead in the competition to create AI solutions that users are ready to pay for. As other Big Tech companies compete to dominate the burgeoning industry, it was able to surpass Alphabet (GOOGL.O) thanks to its cooperation with OpenAI, the provider of ChatGPT.
AI voice assistants have had difficulty achieving two key aspects of realistic voice conversations: responding in real time and being interrupted. OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google demonstrated these capabilities last week. Additionally, Google declared that it would be adding a number of generative AI elements to its profitable search engine.
Apple (AAPL.O), which abandoned Intel’s processors in favor of its own proprietary chips based on Arm designs, has been putting more and more pressure on the PC sector. Mac computers now feature faster performance and longer battery life thanks to Apple-designed processors, which consume less energy than chips made by competitors.
In 2016, Microsoft assigned Qualcomm the task of spearheading the project to switch the Windows operating system to Arm’s chip designs. This year marks the end of Qualcomm’s exclusivity on Microsoft Windows devices. As previously reported by Reuters, other chip makers, like Nvidia (NVDA.O), are working on producing their own Arm-based PC CPUs.