Microsoft believes Qualcomm's newest Snapdragon X Elite chips will finally beat Apple's M-series chips

Reports say Microsoft will hold an event in Seattle next month to unveil its next generation of "AI PCs."

This isn't entirely surprising given that Microsoft recently launched new business-only versions of the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. Therefore, the event will likely focus on consumer versions of the same.

What's more interesting is that these same reports say that these new devices will feature Arm processors and that Microsoft is confident that they will outperform Apple's latest M3-powered MacBook Air in both CPU performance and AI-related tasks. According to reports, Microsoft will plan demos at the event to show these processors outperforming the M3 MacBook Air.

Microsoft believes Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X Elite processors will finally deliver the performance required for Microsoft to make a big push for Windows on Arm. One crucial part of this is that these new devices will feature "faster app emulation than Rosetta 2". Rosetta 2 is the translator that Apple uses to enable Intel applications to run on its M-series chips.

This is critical because app emulation has been a glaring weakness of Arm-powered Surface devices thus far. This is further compounded by the fact that not every popular Windows app has a native Arm version. App emulation is therefore imperative if Microsoft is to successfully convince users to invest in Arm-powered Surface devices.

The event is rumoured to take place on 20 May, which is just a day before Microsoft's annual Build developers conference.

Source: The Verge