Why Are Intel Processors AWOL in Microsoft’s New Surfaces?

I found something amiss in Microsoft’s huge reveal of its new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models: Where are the ones with Intel processors inside? Yes, for the first time, Microsoft has released consumer-grade Surface products without an Intel option—just Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite.

Without jumping to any conclusions as to the fate of Intel, or what this means writ large for the computing industry, it’s clear to me why Intel has been left out of the mainstream Surface lineup, as well as Microsoft’s initial Copilot+ PC launch—at least for now. (It's still Intel Inside the "Surface for Business" models released earlier this year.)

Qualcomm Beat Intel to the Copilot+ PC Punch

While Microsoft is clearly in partnership with all the major Windows PC chip manufacturers in its new “Copilot+ PC” program, you’ll find only Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips inside the first Copilot+ PCs that drop starting June 18. I suspect this has to do with Qualcomm’s current claim to 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) with its Snapdragon X chips, led by the Snapdragon X's Hexagon neural processing units (NPU).

Comparatively, laptops available now with Intel’s first-generation “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra chips produce up to 34 TOPS, which is not only a smaller number but also not capable of processing locally the stresses laid on by Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant, which is the namesake of Copilot+ PCs. (At least 40 TOPS on the NPU are required for a system to handle local Copilot queries.)

By this point, it seems that Microsoft had a target date to launch its Copilot+ PC program, and Intel wasn’t able to meet it with “Lunar Lake,” its next generation of Core Ultra processors. The NPUs in Lunar Lake, Intel teased on May 20, should push 45 TOPS alone, with more than double that potential when the integrated graphics processor (IGP) cores are applied.

And so, at the moment, you have just one processor option with the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop consumer models at checkout. (Well, two if you count both the Plus and Elite versions of Snapdragon X.)

With Prism, Microsoft Helped Qualcomm Quite a Lot

Qualcomm has been making appearances in Microsoft's Surface Pro tablets for the past several years. So, how did Qualcomm finally close the gap with Intel to become the sole chip available in the newest Surface products (at least for now)?

Emulation is the answer, and you can’t do that without Microsoft’s help. It appears that Microsoft has never stopped working on improving its capabilities to emulate Windows—written originally for the x86 processor instruction set—for systems running on alternative instruction sets, namely Arm’s aptly named Arm64.

These attempts at getting more of Windows and the apps written for it to work on Arm systems have had many names, and the latest might be the one that sticks: Prism. This new emulator works with even deeper updates Microsoft has made to the Windows 11 kernel and compiler, the underlying codebases that dictate how an operating system works, to not only support more x86 and x64 apps but also make them run faster.

“Emulated apps on PCs running the Snapdragon X Elite are more than 2x faster than previous generation Windows Arm devices running Windows 11 22H2,” Microsoft’s John Cable and Keena Grigsby wrote in a blog post.

It’s clear that Microsoft has been working on this for a long time and that this day was inevitable. It just took a bit longer than perhaps anyone expected, least of all Microsoft.

But, Why Help Qualcomm in the First Place?

I should mention that much of this effort to get Windows to work properly on Arm has been conducted in the shadow of Apple’s MacBook Air. Following its release in 2008, Microsoft worked hard with PC and chip manufacturing partners to respond (remember Intel’s Ultrabooks?), only in 2012 to finally lead by example with its first Surface tablet and later, Surface Laptops.

Naturally, several generations of Surface were solely Intel-based products. Once rumors of Apple dropping Intel in its MacBooks to shack up with Arm started swirling, years before the first M1 MacBook Air dropped in November of 2020, Microsoft got to work making sure Windows could run on Arm, too--just in case.

Recommended by Our Editors

Everything We Saw at Microsoft's AI Event: Copilot+ PCs, Recall, Surface, More

At Microsoft Build, Did We Just See the Spark of a PC-Laptop Revolution?

First Look: HP Adopts Snapdragon X Elite Alongside an OmniBook Brand Revival

That’s where Qualcomm, the global leader in any Arm-based processor that isn’t Apple’s, came in. It started with the ill-fated Windows RT running on the Arm-based Surface RT in 2012, then it evolved into Microsoft designing some of its own chips based on Qualcomm’s work. Today, it culminates in the latest Surface products running on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X line of Arm chips.

Intel Plans to Hit Back With a Swiftness

Of course, don’t count Intel out just yet, and not just because Microsoft hasn’t either. Intel plans to come back at Qualcomm with a vengeance. Remember, the company just teased that its next generation of Core Ultra processors, Lunar Lake, will not only meet Qualcomm’s 45 TOPS figure but likely surpass it by more than double.

In an announcement timed with Microsoft’s big Surface and Copilot+ PC debut, Intel showed off that Lunar Lake can pull off up to 105 TOPS when its whole platform is applied including its IGP. This will naturally eclipse Qualcomm’s figure, but these stronger Core Ultra chips aren’t expected to drop until Q3 of this year.

When it happens, however, will Microsoft issue Intel Lunar Lake-based Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models to match the Meteor Lake ones it released for businesses earlier this year? That’s yet to be seen, and a Microsoft spokesperson had this to say: "While we don’t comment on our roadmap, our recent product releases and today’s new products demonstrate that Surface innovation is a key part of moving PC into the Copilot era. We are excited to be starting that journey today with Qualcomm."

Here’s to hoping for the holdouts.