The event showcased some of the first computers that will use the Apple M3-rivaling Snapdragon X Elite chip.
Qualcomm unveiled its next PC chip last October, the Snapdragon X Elite, as an alternative to Intel and AMD silicon that would rival Apple’s M-series in performance and battery life. At Microsoft Build, we saw the first wave of PCs using those chips announced — and what kinds of AI features Microsoft wants them to empower.
Microsoft rebranded its AI PCs as Copilot Plus PCs after its Copilot generative AI software assistant, the first of which are variants of the Surface Laptop 6 and Surface Pro powered by Snapdragon X Elite as well as the newly announced and Snapdragon X Plus chip (for lower priced devices). Acer, HP, Lenovo and Samsung unveiled laptops that will also use Qualcomm’s PC chips, which will start to be available on June 18.
Microsoft is hedging its bets, with some versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Laptop 6 that come with Intel Core Ultra chips. Regardless of which silicon is used, Microsoft is requiring all Copilot PCs to run at least 40 trillion operations per second neural processing units, the industry’s current metric for AI computation performance, and some of the laptops using Qualcomm’s chips pushed 45 trillion operations per second.
