Microsoft is playing with AMD silicon for its upcoming Surface devices

[nanoguy]

Something to look forward to: Microsoft's Surface line owes a big part of its success to Intel's CPUs, but the company has been playing with competing silicon in its labs, possibly paving the way for an AMD-powered Surface laptop. The Redmond giant's longstanding relationship with Intel is said to be less than rosy due to the Skylake blunder and is looking to diversify the chips it'll use in upcoming devices.

Microsoft is expected to unveil new Surface devices later this year and into the next, and while many enthusiasts are looking forward to see the mysterious dual-screen Surface that’s been passed around internally, the most interesting development might come in the form of an AMD-powered Surface laptop, with similar looks to the previous generation design and a USB-C port instead of the proprietary Surface Connect.

In a new report on Petri, long-time Microsoft watcher Brad Sams noted that a 12nm AMD Picasso SoC is one of the options explored by the company to reduce its reliance on Intel chips.

AMD’s APUs already power Xbox, so a closer partnership that extends to laptops is something enthusiasts have been dreaming about for years – a Zen+ CPU core coupled with a Vega GPU at the heart of the upcoming Surface laptop.

Sams says the Redmond giant is also cooking up custom ARM-based silicon with Qualcomm for its upcoming Surface Pro code-named Excalibur, possibly a derivative of the powerful Snapdragon 8cx we’ve seen in extensive benchmarks against Intel’s i5 8250u. Judging by the official info on the 8cx Compute Platform, this could be a boon for enterprises looking for 5G, full hypervisor support, and a host of security features.

This doesn't mean Microsoft is giving up on Intel for larger members of the Surface family, but seeing as the company is looking at both Qualcomm and AMD, the tech giant will have to work hard to keep up in the consumer market, and a recent internal memo proves it’s starting to take AMD’s recent innovations more seriously.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/80686-microsoft-playing-amd-silicon-upcoming-surface-devices.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmmmmmm ...... the long standing alliances may be shifting, eh? Not a bad idea ......

 

[Adi6293]

Good for AMD

 

[Squid Surprise]

I'm not sure this qualifies as "MS is going to use AMD in their Surfaces in the future"...

It just said they were "playing with AMD silicon"... this could merely be about leverage while negotiating with Intel for their next CPUs...

And while Ryzen is looking great in desktops, AMD really hasn't cracked the high-end laptop market - which is what the Surface kind of is.... so I'd be a lot more cautious about hailing AMD as the new MS partner...

 

[texasrattler]

AMD is already a MS partner. This just would strengthen the partnership. But this could just be a negotiation tac by MS.
I’m almost certain a lot of companies play around with different designs of tech. Doesn’t really mean anything until it hits stores or there is a official announcement.

 

[urbanman2004]

Diversifying your portfolio is the smartest thing M$ could be doing instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket, especially in light of all the MDS/speculative execution exploits plaguing Intel CPUs as of late.