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Surface-Pro-Feature

A new book by Brad Sams, Beneath A Surface, details the history and development of Microsoft's Surface production portfolio, starting from the early days when a massive Surface RT writedown about killed the product line birthday to the current era. It also contains some intriguing hints about what might be next for the family.

Sams' book details plans for a Surface Studio monitor with modular components — it's not clear exactly how this would work — every bit well as a supposedly larger form gene for the small "Andromeda" device that's been rumored for years now, co-ordinate to The Verge. Merely the most interesting news is a rumor of a new Surface system powered past AMD hardware instead of Intel.

The rumor here is that Microsoft, unhappy with Intel'south sluggish progress on 10nm, might turn to AMD and its upcoming Picasso line of products to supplant Chipzilla as a principal vendor in SurfaceSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce systems. The new hardware would supposedly be based on AMD'southward Picasso line of products. Picasso is reputed to exist the codename for AMD'southward second generation of APUs, but it's not clear what kind of production it is. Specifically, Picasso could exist a 12nm APU refresh with minor functioning uplifts and/or power improvements or a 7nm die shrink of Ryzen Mobile. The latter would be much more likely to give AMD a meaningful performance improvement in mobile compared to the former — we'd await the gains on 12nm to be much more than small-scale.

The question of whether Microsoft would make this kind of bet on AMD is an interesting one. On the 1 paw, Ryzen Mobile has been the stepchild of AMD's overall Ryzen efforts. As a contempo Tom'due south Hardware story notes, AMD customers are unhappy about the fact that GPU drivers on Ryzen Mobile haven't been updated in over a year. That's unheard of on the desktop side of things, and while AMD'due south basic response has been to blame OEMs to date, information technology also claims it will piece of work with companies like Dell and HP to encourage them to release cards more frequently. Still, mobile doesn't seem to have been a major priority for AMD in the past 12 months. Mobile Vega has barely tipped up (and really only in the context of Apple), while the last laptop news we've heard suggests AMD'south share in that market is yet firmly in unmarried-digit territory. To some extent this may simply reflect company priorities — with multiple markets to cull from, Lisa Su may take decided the overlap between desktop and server made the virtually sense to focus on.

Still, there may be some genuine opportunity for AMD and Microsoft. At least one product in the Surface lineup, the Surface Book, suffers from significant hardware throttling nether sustained load based on recent tests conducted by HotTech Vision and Assay. If AMD's 7nm chips offer Microsoft a risk to dodge that problem, information technology'southward possible the visitor could pick upward business.

HotTech-Data

A deal with AMD would exist a pregnant win for the smaller manufacturer, simply in that location are practical reasons to be dubious of this happening. Even if AMD's 7nm mobile products are the equal of Intel'south, Microsoft might have concerns about whether AMD will proceed to evangelize long-term mobile follow-ups for the foreseeable future. A potent 7nm ramp would probably aid here, only between the two firms, Intel has the more consequent rail record.

The other factor to consider is that Microsoft has historically been quite willing to bend when Intel applies pressure. There are consistent rumors that the Surface Go was originally going to be based on ARM hardware until Intel strenuously lobbied for the organization to rely on a Pentium instead. During the erstwhile Vista Capable lawsuits from a decade ago, Microsoft best-selling that it inverse the definition of "Vista Capable" solely to assistance Intel send more chipsets and brand its quarterly earnings, despite the fact that this represented a reversal of promises Microsoft had made to HP regarding which products would receive the nod for Vista support.

The one-time Wintel alliance may take some cracks in it compared with the old days, but it's still held remarkably steady based on what we've heard about Intel-Microsoft relations. Rumors to the contrary could also be a way for Microsoft to put force per unit area on Intel and push for better pricing or resource allotment in futurity builds.

Now Read: Windows-Based ARM Laptops Are Repeating Intel's Clover Trail Error, Surface Boosts Microsoft Into Pinnacle 5 PC OEM Status, and Microsoft'southward Disappointing Surface Become Reportedly Used x86 at Intel'south Insistence