Latest news with #SoundWave
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
AMD is allegedly working on Arm-based "Sound Wave" APUs for Microsoft's Surface laptops next year
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. AMD is allegedly working on an Arm-based SoC, codenamed "Sound Wave", in a bid to power Microsoft's Surface laptops next year, claims Kepler via ITHome. Moving away from traditional x86 designs, Sound Wave is reported to feature the Arm ISA and will likely leverage off-the-shelf Cortex cores. Details on exact specifications, availability, and pricing remain under wraps, so it's wise to approach this leak with caution. Looking beyond its historical Wintel roots, Microsoft has made a clear push towards the WoA (Windows on Arm) platform. This was put into effect with the firm's partnership with Qualcomm, which yielded the Snapdragon X family. This was likely a significant catalyst that motivated Intel to engineer an efficiency-first alternative: Lunar Lake. In fact, even Nvidia is entering the WoA space with its rumored N1 family of SoCs, developed in partnership with MediaTek. The strong success of the Nintendo Switch, powered by Nvidia hardware, underlines a lucrative market for Arm-based handhelds. These Sound Wave SoCs, if true, could be a foundation for the Steam Deck 2, but I must emphasize this is highly speculative. Microsoft's current-generation Surface Pro 11 and Surface 7 laptops are powered by chips from Qualcomm and Intel. AMD's existing gap in efficiency compared to Snapdragon X, Lunar Lake, and likely soon-to-launch N1 offerings could be bridged with these Arm-based SoCs. It is suggested these APUs will slot into the FF5 socket, succeeding FF3, which is home to the Steam Deck's Aerith/Sephiroth APUs. Regarding the integrated graphics, AMD should continue to employ its established Radeon IP instead of adopting Arm's Mali graphics solutions. Lunar Lake sticks to x86 roots, and while it might be inferior in performance to Arm-based equivalents from Qualcomm and Apple, it comes extremely close in efficiency, even exceeding them in battery endurance tests. That being said, Lunar Lake wasn't exactly cheap for Intel, including expensive manufacturing with TSMC's N3B process, Foveros 3D packaging, on-package LPDDR5x-8533 RAM, and next-generation IP blocks like Xe2-LPG for graphics. This is why ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger characterized Lunar Lake as an expensive one-off design. So, AMD's decision could be driven by the high costs and complexities associated with building an ultra-efficient x86 design, especially for the sub-10W range, and Microsoft's growing push for Windows on Arm and AI-first PCs. Likewise, can Microsoft address the teething optimization and compatibility issues that still plague the WoA ecosystem by then? We should reserve our judgments until AMD actually reveals these products, assuming they're even in the pipeline. While AMD could reveal more at CES 2026, we'll probably have to wait a bit longer as Microsoft tends to announce new Surface products during the summer season. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Tom's Guide
15-05-2025
- Tom's Guide
Microsoft Surface PCs with AMD Arm-based chip just tipped to arrive in 2026
A new rumor claims that Microsoft is working on shipping new Surface PCs powered by an AMD Arm-based chip in 2026. The leak comes from regular tipster Kepler2 in a NeoGaf post (via our colleagues at Windows Central) saying that the upcoming AMD chip, codenamed Sound Wave, is "made for the 2026 [Microsoft] Surface lineup." The main thread is about PlayStation 6 getting an AMD 3D stacked chip, and Kepler2 doesn't provide more information about Sound Wave or next year's Surface PCs. Thanks to previous rumors there is some information about AMD's Sound Wave chip, which should hint at what 2026 Surface could look like. According to Windows Central, the AMD chip is rumored to be an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), which joins a CPU and an integrated GPU on the same die. It should have 6 CPU cores (2 performance and 4 efficiency) with the integrated GPU with four compute units built on RDNA 3.5. Reportedly, this new chip is designed for low-powered devices that have a 5-10W thermal envelope. All of this hints at a chip that is less powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, which could mean that Microsoft is looking at refresh of the Surface Go, which was last released in 2023. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Next year is going to be ARM heavy as Qualcomm will likely reveal a next generation X chip later this year and Nvidia is reportedly teaming up with MediaTek for its own Arm-based laptop chip. Microsoft just released a cheaper Surface Pro and Surface laptop as alternatives to the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7. Both of the Surface PCs run on Snapdragon X Plus, which is also allegedly more powerful than the rumored AMD Sound Wave. Assuming Kepler2 is correct, the low-powered Surface PCs featuring AMD's new chip will likely launch around this time next year as Microsoft tends to release its new PCs in the spring after its annual Build conference.
