This is the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra with Nvidia RTX Spark

Next time, Microsoft had to write down $900 million bet Nvidia’s Arm-based chip could power its first Windows portable record, the the original Microsoft Surface. But today, it’s trying again. Microsoft and Nvidia have just announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, a computer with a new Arm-based Nvidia chip at its core.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra, like its specs or a general idea of ​​what it might cost. But Microsoft promises that it is the most powerful Surface, period: “This is the most powerful thing we’ve ever made,” Microsoft Surface boss Andrew Hill answers, when we ask how it works.

It includes Nvidia’s RTX Spark new “superchip”, which is almost a processor that the company has already sold in its own DGX Spark mini-PC for AI developersbut now it is optimized to work with Windows 11 instead. That chip has 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU cores and 128GB of integrated memory, although some models will be sold with as few as 16GB – Nvidia told the press briefly that the RTX Spark family will eventually grow to reach more prices.

In addition to the device, which should provide “all-day battery life,” almost RTX 5070 laptop graphics, up to 1 petaflop of AI compute, the Surface Laptop will have a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen at 262 pixels per inch. Microsoft says it’s the “brightest display we’ve ever shipped” with 2,000 HDR-brightest dots, and that it’s the largest trackpad Microsoft has ever shipped on a Surface.

It will come in dark gray and silver, and should weigh under 4.5 pounds.

Ports include USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, and an SD card slot and headphone jack, though Microsoft isn’t saying what speeds or formats we’re getting from each of them yet. (Looks like we’re getting three USB-C ports?) Instead of all the concrete, his blog post is filled with interesting phrases like these:

The Surface Laptop Ultra won’t be the only machine coming with Nvidia’s new chips, but Microsoft is very concerned about the success of other RTX Spark laptops and small PCs. Microsoft and Nvidia have reportedly been working together for years to get Windows ready for Arm devices like this, and RTX Spark in particular.

You can hear more about this in Our full RTX Spark storyand in a Microsoft blog post where it talks about some updates that are designed to take advantage of the RTX Spark, and developers who have decided to support Windows on Arm.