Earlier this month, Microsoft announced two new Surface computers with ARM processors from Qualcomm: the Surface Pro 12-inch and the Surface Laptop 13-inch. These two PCs joined the rest of the current Surface lineup, which offers configurations with ARM and x86 chips. So far, if you want an ARM-powered PC, your options are limited to just one: Qualcomm Snapdragon. However, next year, users might get another variant.
According to a reliable leaker, KeplerL2, Microsoft plans to use AMD's upcoming ARM-based Sound Wave chips for the 2026 Surface lineup. At this point, very little is known about the processor and the Surface devices that will be powered by it. Sound Wave is expected to pack six cores, built-in RDNA 3.5 graphics and a relatively small TDP of 5W to 10W, optimal for devices like small tablets or laptops.
Such a low-power part looks like an interesting choice, considering that the current Snapdragon X processors have a TDP of up to 23W. Lower TDP means less power, so it might indicate that Microsoft is thinking about using AMD's upcoming ARM processors for lower-end devices, like the Surface Go or the Surface Laptop Go, which currently use Intel chips. This will also mark the return of AMD chips to the Surface computers, which were abandoned after the less-than-stellar Ryzen processors for the Surface Laptop 3 and Laptop 4 generations. After that, Microsoft ditched AMD chips and focused on Intel and Qualcomm solutions.
AMD is not the only company working on ARM chips (the company gave up on ARM after the Opteron A1100 SoC from 2016). There are plenty of rumors about Nvidia joining the party with its own ARM chips for Windows PCs in 2026, which means we will have plenty of competition and exciting developments in the Windows on ARM segment, which was pretty much non-existent until 2024.
Source: KeplerL2
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