New report says the next Microsoft Surface PCs will all have NPUs inside

Microsoft’s next products in its Surface PC lineup may be getting some extra hardware. A new report says that all of the next-gen Surface devices will include an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) inside.

The report comes from Thurrott.com, via two unnamed sources who reportedly are members of Microsoft’s MVP program. The company is hosting its annual MVP Global Summit event this week at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters. It’s possible we could get more info on Microsoft’s future plans from that event.

The story says Microsoft wants to put in NPUs in all of its next Surface PCs to increase speed for AI and machine learning programs. As we have learned in the past few months, Microsoft has been making a big push into the AI space with services like Bing Chat, among others.

The article points out that Surface PCs use CPUs made by Intel, AMD, and Microsoft’s own ARM-based SQ 3 chip, which itself is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chipset. Indeed, the Microsoft SQ 3 version of the Surface Pro 9 already includes an NPU, so it’s not a stretch to learn that more Surface devices will include NPUs as well.

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