Future Microsoft Surface Laptops May Ditch Intel for AMD

Future Microsoft Surface Laptops May Ditch Intel for AMD

Microsoft Surface Pro

When you think of Microsoft Surface laptops, then chances are that you are aware that they’ve primarily relied on Intel for their CPU. That may soon change as it appears that Microsoft might ditch them in favour of AMD chips.

Rumours have surfaced that Microsoft has been working on new Surface laptops that utilize the power of AMD to reduce their dependency on Intel. It is said to be the 12nm AMD Picasso APU, the successor to the Raven Ridge APUs, which features the Zen+ CPU cores and Vega GPU cores. If you’re not aware, the Zen+ is different from the Zen2 architecture, and uses a 12nm fabrication process instead of 7nm. It also appears to drop the proprietary Surface Connect in favour of the much more open USB Type-C port.

Aside from that, it’s said that Microsoft is working with Qualcomm for a custom ARM-based silicon for a new Microsoft Surface Pro with the codename “Excalibur”. It appears to be similar to the Snapdragon 8cx, and is expected to feature full 5G connectivity.

To give you a better perspective, the 7nm Snapdragon 8cx consists of an Octa-core Kryo 495 CPU and an Adreno 680 GPU. It is capable of 5G and is said to perform better than an Intel Core i5-8265U while simultaneously providing better battery life. We’ll be exploring more on this SoC in a future post but for now, you can say that it’s an interesting move on Microsoft’s end.

For now, do take this information with a grain of salt. We’ll be reporting more on this as information becomes available so stay tuned to Pokde.net for further updates.

Source: TweakTown

Pokdepinion: This is gonna be a very huge change, one that would certainly shake the market for sure. Would like to see how the AMD SoC will perform in terms of efficiency.