Project Volterra, Microsoft mini PC with Qualcomm ARM processor

For decades, Microsoft has collaborated fruitfully with Intel to shape the PC market through a combination of hardware and software.

But in recent years ARM architecture came into playled by Qualcomm processors in mobile phones and Apple M1 in computers.

Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind in this new hardware war, and in fact, it’s already up for sale. laptop with ARM processorSurface Pro X (review).

presented today new computer based on ARM architecturebut this is quite different.

This is what Microsoft calls Project Volterra, a mini PC with a Qualcomm ARM processor. and NPUthat is, a neural processor focused on artificial intelligence.

It doesn’t reveal too many details, but according to The Verge it does have 3 USB ports on the back, a DisplayPort port, an Ethernet port, and two USB Type C ports on the side. The body is made from recycled plastic taken from the ocean.

Volterra Project It has scalable design, multiple mini PCs can be stacked on top of each other. What you see in the first news photo is three computers stacked on top of each other. Here is an image with two mini PCs showing the size:

Project Volterra is hardware designed not for the end user, but for developers. It was created for develop artificial intelligence applications in the cloud, although, of course, you can create any applications.

To facilitate development, Microsoft creates native ARM versions of your most popular apps and tools. This is the case Visual Studio 2022 for ARMthe preliminary version of which will be released in “coming weeks“.

In addition, Microsoft is also working on vNative versions of NET 6, Java, Visual C++, Windows Terminal, etc. for ARM.

Until now, these tools could be used on ARM computers such as the Surface Pro X. by emulationbut some features were disabled and performance decreased.

Another step towards standardizing the ARM architecture in the PC ecosystem.