Apple announced earlier this year that the company will launch its ARM-based Apple Silicon. Recently, with the release of new Mac devices supporting the Apple M1 chipset, the company officially began the transition from Intel to Apple chips.
Now, according to Bloomberg News, Microsoft is still following Apple’s leadership and is reportedly developing its own ARM-based chipset. The company is developing a new chip that supports Windows 10, which is mainly used in data centers, but is also expected to power Surface devices.
The Redmond-based technology giant is currently using Intel-based processors for most of its Azure cloud services. In addition, the company’s Surface device lineup is supported by Intel processors.
But now it seems that Microsoft is ready to move on. The company recently partnered with AMD and Qualcomm to design custom chips for Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro X, highlighting the fact that Intel will soon be replaced. However, similar to Apple’s process, it may be carried out in stages.
According to reports, Microsoft is working to provide devices based on the ARM chipset and is improving support for the Windows 10 operating system. However, unlike Apple, the company has a broader technology footprint.
Its products are used by different manufacturers and supported by different chipsets. Therefore, no matter what Microsoft creates, it needs to have broader compatibility and versatility.
It will be interesting to see developments in this field. In addition to Apple and Microsoft, Amazon also poses a threat to Intel and AMD. The e-commerce giant is also AWS’s leading cloud infrastructure provider, with its own ARM-based Graviton2 processor.
Although new chipsets based on the ARM architecture have better performance, longer battery life and cheaper prices, their market share is still small, and most of the market is dominated by Intel and AMD.
