- AMD, which is a major x86 player, is reportedly developing an Arm-based "Sound Lake" APU for a 2026 Microsoft Surface device.
- The Sound Lake APU is expected to use Arm's vanilla Cortex CPU cores and may employ AMD's Radeon graphics.
- After Qualcomm, Nvidia and AMD are said to be adopting the Arm architecture, while the future of Intel's x86 architecture looks uncertain.
After Qualcomm, AMD may be the major x86 player to power Windows on Arm (WoA) devices. According to KerplerL2 (via ITHome), AMD is allegedly working on an Arm-based “Sound Wave” APU to power Microsoft’s next-generation Surface device in 2026. AMD’s Sound Wave APU is said to feature vanilla Cortex CPU cores, but on the graphics front, users will likely get AMD’s Radeon GPU.
Last year, Microsoft launched its Surface devices exclusively with Arm-based Snapdragon X chipsets for consumers. However, due to x86-to-Arm compatibility issues, Microsoft released Surface laptops with Intel’s Lunar Lake chipset for business customers in 2025. Now, it appears AMD will be joining the Arm bandwagon to deliver competitive performance and improved battery life on Windows PCs.
It was earlier reported that Qualcomm’s exclusive agreement with Microsoft to develop Arm-based chips for Windows is ending in 2024. Now that the agreement has expired, new players are adopting the Arm architecture to power Windows devices.
Previously, we reported that Nvidia is developing Arm chips for Windows PCs, namely the N1 and N1X chipsets. In fact, Nvidia is expected to announce Arm-based SoCs next week at Computex in Taiwan. So with Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD adopting the Arm architecture, it is left to be seen how Intel improves the x86 architecture to remain competitive in the PC landscape.
