Microsoft plans to unveil several pieces of hardware and software related to consumer devices on Monday at an event at its campus in Redmond, Washington.
The Windows maker is expected to unveil a recent version of the Surface Pro tablet and Surface Laptop with Qualcomm chips based on the Arm Holdings architecture.
After Intel processors dominated the PC market for decades, Qualcomm and other lower-power Arm component makers tried to compete in the Windows PC market.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips include a so-called neural processing unit, designed to accelerate AI-oriented applications such as Microsoft’s Copilot software.
Microsoft’s product event, held the day before the start of the annual developer conference, is open to journalists and industry analysts who attend in person. It will not be broadcast live.
Microsoft is looking to extend its early lead in the race to create artificial intelligence tools that consumers will be willing to pay for. A partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI has allowed it to overtake Alphabet as other Huge Tech companies race to dominate the emerging field.
Last week, Alphabet’s OpenAI and Google unveiled artificial intelligence technologies that can have real-time voice response and interruption, a hallmark of realistic voice conversations that pose a challenge for AI voice assistants. Google also announced that it is introducing several generative artificial intelligence features to its lucrative search engine.
The PC industry has come under increasing pressure from Apple since the company introduced custom chips based on Arm designs and abandoned Intel processors. Apple-designed processors gave Mac computers longer battery life and greater performance compared to competitor chips that exploit more power.
Microsoft engaged Qualcomm to lead the effort to port the Windows operating system to Arm chip designs in 2016. Qualcomm has an exclusivity for Microsoft Windows devices that expires this year. Other chip designers such as Nvidia are making efforts to create their own ARM-based PC chips.
