Microsoft has unveiled a Surface-branded laptop aimed at developers, running Nvidia’s ARM-based CPU, the RTX Spark N1X, billing the device as idea for offloading AI workloads to local hardware.

The area is one in which Apple, whose chips are also based on the power-efficient ARM architecture, has had some success, to the point that it’s reportedly considering selling servers targeted at AI tasks.

Microsoft’s announcement on Wednesday comes after Apple last month began shipping high-powered desktops that it pitched as an alternative to cloud-based AI compute.

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra includes a magnetic USB-C port, comparable to Apple’s MagSafe charging port, as well as conventional USB-C and other ports.

The base model uses a RTX Spark N1X chip with an 18-core CPU, with a more powerful 20-core chip also available.

The base model can support up to 32GB, with the 20-core model supporting up to 128GB.

At a launch event in San Francisco, Microsoft demonstrated a Surface laptop offloading portions of AI tasks to local hardware, saving on cloud costs.

On-device security

It said local agentic AI workloads would run in Microsoft Execution Containers, designed to prevent agents from accessing data on the device, amid concerns about AI tools taking unexpected actions and hacking third-party corporate and government systems.

Due to soaring prices of components such as memory, the Surface laptops come with a high price tag, starting at $2,599 (£1,966) for the 18-core system and $5,899 for a 20-core model with 128GB of memory and 1TB of storage.

Microsoft is also offering the Surface RTX Dev Box desktop, which similarly runs on Nvidia CPUs and starts at $5,999.