Microsoft created a mini Surface dev box that Qualcomm couldn’t

Microsoft just announced a The new Ultra laptop over the weekend, and now it’s unveiling a small Surface PC aimed at developers. The new Surface RTX Spark Dev box is powered by the new Nvidia to Arm-based RTX Spark chips, like the Surface Laptop Ultra, and is optimized for heavy-duty and local AI tasks.

The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box looks like the top of the Xbox Series X console, with an aluminum chassis that doubles as a heatsink. It has a 100-watt thermal envelope, slightly more than the 45-watt-to-80-watt thermal envelopes of Nvidia’s RTX Spark laptops. This small Surface PC also has 128GB of integrated memory, making it capable of running up to 120 billion types of parameters locally.

Microsoft is prepping the RTX Spark Dev Box with software like Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, and other tools. “Surface RTX Spark Dev Box ships with Windows 11 Pro designed for graphic designers,” explains Andrew HillVice President of Surface. “The implementation allows developers to do their work: a dark theme, a simple script to create, Curtains removed, Do not disturb. Developers are enabled. PowerShell 7 is the default shell.”

The RTX Spark Dev box also includes the same options from other OEMs that are embracing Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chips for small PCs. It is also a direct replacement Qualcomm has canceled the Snapdragon Dev KitA small Windows on Arm PC that should have shipped two years ago. The Dev Kit was supposed to help developers port their software to Windows on the Arm, but Qualcomm ran into some issues with the hardware version.

While we don’t have full details or pricing, the RTX Spark Dev Box will be available later this year in the US from Microsoft’s online store.