Earlier this year at its Build developer conference, Microsoft announced Project Volterra, a new dev box that's for creating AI applications. Today, it's being unveiled as Windows Dev Box 2023, and it's available now for $599.
The company has also finally confirmed that the device will include a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chipset. Unlike with the Surface Pro 9, it's not rebranding the SoC as a Microsoft SQ3. Alongside the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, it comes with 32GB PDDR4x RAM, a 512GB SSD, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports. There's only one SKU.
Aside from the hardware, software is a big part of the story here. It comes down to the new Arm-native developer toolchain, which was also announced at Build. Right now, you can use a preview of Visual Studio 17.4 that runs natively on Arm. That's a big deal, since full Visual Studio is a massive application. What already works is Arm64EC, something that's going to make it easier to make Arm64 applications with x86 components.
The idea is that Qualcomm's Arm processors are better at AI tasks than Intel's processors are. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 has a DSP that's capable of 15 TOPS, while the Qualcomm AI Engine, which combines the DSP with other components of the chipset, is capable of 29 TOPS. Microsoft demonstrates this on the Arm-powered Surface Pro 9 with 5G, which has features like background noise suppression, eye gaze correction, and more. With the Windows Dev Kit 2023, you'll have the ideal environment for creating applications like those that make use of the neural processing unit.
Windows Dev Kit 2023 is available for purchase today for $599 in eight countries. You can grab one in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, and UK, and the US. Microsoft says that for more information, you can tune into Arm Dev Summit, which takes place this week.
Windows Dev Kit 2023
- Brand
- $599
- Storage
- 512GB
- CPU
- Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3
- Memory
- 32GB LPDDR4x
- Operating System
- Windows 11 Pro
- Ports
- 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
The Windows Dev Kit 2023 is meant to provide everything you need to build Windows on Arm apps that are made for use with neural processing units. It comes with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chipset, and there's a new native developer toolchain you can use.