"Qualcomm + Arm" VS M3, Microsoft is very confident: This time, we are really stronger than Apple!

The new wave of technology has given Microsoft new opportunities. CEO Satya Nadella is boldly betting on trying to seize market share from Apple's Mac with ARM architecture Windows laptops.

On May 20th local time, at the launch event held at its Redmond headquarters, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface series laptops powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip.

Microsoft releases the most powerful computer ever, outperforming M3 Mac by 58%

Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi bluntly stated at the event that the new Surface is the "most powerful laptop ever".

With outstanding sustained computing power, its performance will exceed any existing device, including the M3 MacBook Air, by more than 50%.

According to media who have hands-on experience with the new device, the Surface devices released this time are "light years ahead" of previous Windows laptops with Arm architecture chips. According to Microsoft's tests, the new Surface outperforms the MacBook Air equipped with the M3 chip by 58%.

This time, Microsoft has optimized the new Surface in both software and hardware. Microsoft not only deeply customized and optimized the Windows system at the kernel level to fully leverage the efficiency of the ARM architecture, but also seamlessly integrated more than 40 artificial intelligence models into the system using the neural processing unit (NPU) on the Qualcomm processor to achieve convenient edge computing. Microsoft stated that the new Surface with NPU chips can perform over 400 trillion operations per second, or 40+ TOPS, and provide long-lasting battery life.

The previous generation Surface released in 2022 using Intel chips had a browsing time of only 8 hours and 38 minutes; whereas the new Surface Copilot Plus PC nearly doubled the battery life to 16 hours and 56 minutes; the new Surface's battery life even exceeds that of the 15-inch MacBook Air M3, which has a browsing time of 15 hours.

In addition to powerful computing performance and battery life, the new Surface laptop also features AI-assisted functions such as real-time voice subtitle translation and intelligent super-resolution game graphics enhancement for the first time. Microsoft has seized the technological opportunities brought by the AI wave, giving traditional laptop PCs new capabilities.

It's only a matter of time before ARM replaces x86 architecture

Over the past two years, Microsoft has been secretly collaborating with all top laptop partners to prepare for the launch of a series of Arm chip-driven Windows AI PCs this summer. They are called Copilot Plus PCs, laying the foundation for the AI-driven future Since Apple introduced the M1 chip in 2020, Windows laptops have been far behind Apple's MacBook series in terms of performance and battery life. So this new Surface release is also a moment for Microsoft to shine.

Over the past decade, Microsoft has been trying to promote Windows on Arm, but it has not been very successful.

In 2012, Microsoft first attempted to transition Windows to Arm chips through the Surface RT, but the performance was poor and the application compatibility was bad. Although the Surface Pro X, launched in 2019, showed some improvement in performance, it was quickly surpassed by Apple's M1 chip introduced that year.

Technically, Microsoft has finally seized the opportunity window in the Arm ecosystem. In recent years, with heavyweight software such as Photoshop fully supporting the Arm64 instruction set, mainstream browser kernels such as Chrome, Edge, etc., have also completed native Arm porting, greatly expanding the software ecosystem and user experience of Window on Arm devices. Microsoft stated that its new devices run native Arm applications in 87% of cases.

Microsoft announced that various OEMs including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung will launch the first batch of Copilot Plus PCs using Qualcomm chips this summer.

Microsoft CEO Nadella confidently declared at the event:

Apple has done a great job with the Mac product line, but we will surpass them. We finally have a truly competitive product.

Whether this chip architecture battle will ultimately allow Microsoft to turn the tables remains to be seen. But undoubtedly, in the wave of AI transformation in the entire PC industry, the replacement of Intel x86 architecture by ARM is only a matter of time. If Microsoft can successfully position itself this time, it will gain a first-mover advantage