At its annual developer conference, Microsoft does not usually announce new hardware. But at Build 2022, the company had time to introduce Project Volterra, a Microsoft computer designed to help developers create native ARM applications that use AI-accelerated workloads.
Although we do not yet have all the details of the Volterra Project, what we do know is that it will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset with a dedicated neural or NPU processing unit. Microsoft told TechCrunch that the component will offer “best-in-class” AI capability and efficiency.
A neural processor is not something that is normally seen in computers. They are much more common in phones where they help save battery power by taking on machine learning tasks from the CPU. But with chips like Apple’s M1 that include built-in NPUs, they’re becoming more common, and that’s the future Microsoft wants to be ready for when it arrives.
“Because we expect NPUs to be incorporated into most, if not all, future computing devices, we will make it easier for developers to take advantage of these new capabilities by incorporating NPU support into the end-to-end Windows platform. “said Panos Panay, Microsoft ‘s product manager.
With Volterra, Microsoft is adding Windows support for NPUs. The company also said that development tools like Visual Studio 2022 and Windows Terminal would soon be running natively on ARM hardware. All of this suggests that the company is more eager than ever to get developers to program native ARM applications for Windows.
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