Nooo. The Go is religated to second class citizen status.
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IMHO not any more than it already is with the core m3 versus core I in the pros.
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and I know a bunch of our customers that would be interested in a 5g capable Surface Go class device
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Fascinating. Physics rule.
Oh, and, apparently QualComm wants in on Intel’s racket of chips that melt chassis.
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Thanks for that detailed breakdown, @Desertlap. I get that the old chassis provides greater physical accommodation…but again I have ask, where are these new chipsets from Qualcomm/Intel headed, if they force regressions in design?
When Apple put the M1 inside the IPP, they tune it to run within the reduced thermal envelope—they don’t put new iPad into the old chassis.
What I’m concerned here is about the messaging. Look back at the videos on the SPX release, everyone on the show floor was instantly attracted to the new design. MS didn’t have to market it as the future of 2-in-1s, the look and feel spoke for itself.
How often does a MacBook Air moment like that around? Now we just have vanilla A or vanilla B (with ARM).
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15" lightweight Windows tablet 
. I would buy it.
That is enticing. I am not sure how this compares to WOA versions of Qualcomm cpu’s but for Android phones I prefer 6xx or 7xx series for better balance of performance/efficiency vs costs.
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I guess that depends on the speed of the 700 series. The current iterations Ive tried couldnt hold a candle to my m3 even running the same program in android vs windows. Word for instance or Xodo. With the I3 the Go is even a bit faster. Any 700 cpu put in the go has to perform comparably to a next gen I3. That will require significant improvement.
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A die’s logical design can be incredibly efficient but the design is bound by the physical limitations of the die it is manufactured on, sometimes even at the company’s own financial peril. Intel’s efficiency cores are not that great not because of design but with so much of that owing to the broken state of Intel 10nm+, now Intel 7. Intel has had to cut corners to meet deadlines just to appease investors while meanwhile it causes serious power efficiency issues from a premature release of their manufacturing process. As a prime example, Intel has fixed so many of these efficiency issues in Intel 7 that a Core i9-13900K gets the same performance at 65W as a Core i9-12900K does at just above 250W.
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Microsoft is probably unifying design for several reasons, including:
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By now using the same chassis, that means 100% cross-compatibility between x86 and ARM versions of Surface Pro also meaning access to more accessories for the ARM-based Surface Pro which was not the case in the past. Accessory designers now only have to design to one chassis, not two. A historical severe problem with the Pro X (which I noticed when shopping around for one once but was dissuaded by this very reason) was its niche, low-volume draw dissuaded many accessory makers from creating their compatible versions of their better lines of accessories, such as cases, that fit the Pro X. Now, buyers are guaranteed to be able to have an accessory, such as cases, in the style they want regardless of whichever processor line of Surface Pro is more or less successful.
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Attract more buyers to Windows-on-ARM with longer real-world battery life thanks to a larger capacity battery for the ARM version. There will be even longer battery now that the Surface Pro X/ARM version model has access to the same larger battery as the x86 version of the Surface Pro. They have bumped up from 39Wh to 47.7 Wh, or 22% larger in capacity. If the SQ3 is as efficient as the SQ2, that means at least a couple more hours of battery life. Personally, I think it is a fair trade of tacking on a couple more ounces of battery if it means gaining 2-3 more hours without needing to plug in.
Of course, there are upsides and downsides especially as there will be confusion given the difference in processor architecture and performance as well as the loss in ultimate, iPad Pro-like thinness. I know not everyone will agree with me on this, but I think Microsoft made the right choice unifying the Surface Pro to a single chassis to bring cross-compatibility and to further highlight the efficiency benefits of ARM. I mean, it could always be worse. Do we still remember the first Surface Pro and the Surface Pro 2? We have come a long, long way from the era of that chunky, clunky chassis.
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@Marty To add on to what Hifi says, I think there is most definitely a marketing aspect as well as some revision of history.
It’s been widely repeated that the original Pro X was intended to be the “Next Generation Surface” but also crucially was intended to be Intel based and that the SQ was in essence a fallback option since Intel couldn’t deliver suitable chips.
So fast forward to today I think the reason (and borne out by the way MS was talking at the event.) the SQ3 system wasn’t a Pro X2 or some similar name is that MS is essentially saying that ARM is mainstream Windows now and is just a configuration option that has some unique benefits including 5G, the neural stuff and better battery life too.
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I 100% agree! I just think it should have been the new chassis! 
Those comparisons would be even better on a revamped SPX body.
This is what I’m getting at. You have already designed a sweet, new form factor for future flagship SPs. The first series of chips didn’t quite meet the promise, but now with the next generation silicon (13th-gen Intel/SQ3), they still couldn’t make the necessary adjustments?
I’ve seen how well even 12th-gen mobile chips, like the i5-1240p on the GB2 Pro 360 15", can be tuned. That thing amazed me with >5 hours of Civ5 gaming on battery, going from 80% (battery care enabled) to hibernation at ~5%. I checked temps, and it didn’t even crack 60C and that machine is only 12mm thick. An Intel chip!
Granted the SPX is 7.3mm, so it’s still an engineering challenge, but given Intel’s efficiency improvements that @Hifihedgehog referred to, and Qualcomm’s experience designing in mobile to begin with, and MS’ full control of the firmware/OS/driver stack…all of that wasn’t up to the task?
No, it wasn’t matter of physics, it was a matter of design choice and cost. Which is fine, but then I have to wonder when this supposed M1 competitor that both Intel and Qualcomm love talking about, is actually going to materialize.
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I think you are tilting at windmills a bit 
Other than obsessives like us who care about the nuances like you mention such as that the Pro X was thinner and a bit lighter than the Pro 7/8 I’d bet that the buyers just didn’t care.
And MS infamous telemetry likely confirmed it.
What they did care about was the perception the Pro X was substantially slower and not broadly compatible, and it was running 32 bit X86 emulation. that left the better battery life and integrated LTE which simply wasn’t enough differentiation for vast majority of buyers.
As to Intel’s misses, well the fact they seem to be perpetually stuck at 7nm affects not just the processor but all of the supporting chips and thus the motherboard.
With the SQ chipsets, while the chipset and motherboard have been smaller than Intel’s, they are still larger than what you’d find in even the biggest smartphone, and for that matter, have even been bigger than those found in Samsung’s Tab S series.
Not to mention that smartphones from Apple, Samsung and One Plus have actually gotten bigger thicker and heavier for the last few generations and the companies haven’t paid a penalty in the marketplace. Heck Apple tried to make a small device with the iPhone 12 and 13 mini, and it just didn’t sell.
That tells me that the broader market didn’t value the virtues you mention with us being the very tiny exception.
So TLDR the virtues you tout/appreciate, the broader market said “Meh”.
Like I mentioned earlier we aren’t formally testing the Pro 9 5g yet, but just anecdotal use so far shows a significantly faster device over all compared to the previous Pro X.
And the addition of the neural cores again anecdotally makes in some cases for a significantly better experience with video calls, and photo capture compared to the Intel Pro 9. TLDR here is that the Pro 9 5g hands down is MS best teams device.
And we expect that gap to widen as those get optimized apps.
IMHO the biggest challenge MS faces now is the legacy of Windows being all things to all people, which also leads to the classic scenario of jack of all trades, master of none.
And Apples’ 100% control of all aspects of the device from OS to hardware, MS simply cannot even hope to get close to. In other words a huge part of why the M1 was as remarkable achievement as it was owed a lot to a truly optimized OS to accompany it.
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Right? That would have been nice. I though the advent of WOA would mean sleek compact tablets like the Pro X but with smaller screens. And instead for the next generation the innovation is “We added unnecessary vents to reduce manufacturing cost. Oh BTW we raised the price. Have a nice day!”
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I recall the SPX was about 50% faster than the Galaxy Book 2 WOA tablet at the time. I know testing isn’t complete, but ballpark, can we expect a similar jump from the Pro X to the Pro 9 WOA, or is the improvement a bit more modest (like 20%) this time around?
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Too soon to tell as so far anyway as experience is highly variable across the various apps I’ve tried. One of our custom apps for instance shows a 150% jump.
I can confidently say however that it is noticeably faster across the board than the Pro X regardless.
And the 5g appears to be as good as the one engineer hyped it to me to be.
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Yeah, except anything x86 would have too short of battery life at that point if they made it Pro X-thin with its smaller battery. Here is something else I had missed. Maybe we will get graphene batteries in a few generations from now. Then we can have thinner, lighter devices with the same battery capacities.
Wouldn’t that be a sufficient reason for Panos to tell Intel that “we will go full on ARM from 2023 (two years ago) if you guys don’t catch up”? Every other PC maker would follow knowing full well that WOI would stop dead in their tracks.
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Well, except Intel 7 is rebranded Intel 10nm+ and though technically it fits roughly the same amount of transistors per unit area as TSMC’s 7nm, in reality, it also draws a heckuva lot more power as well despite having similar transistor density. 13th Gen finally seems to get close in fixing this power efficiency issue in Intel 7, but that remains to be seen just how well it works out in practice and not merely in Intel’s slanted slideshows…
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Interpret “efficiency improvements” to mean “fix Alder Lake’s efficiency regressions due to Intel 7/Intel 10nm.” I got ahead of myself because while arising battery technologies like graphene may make thinness more of a possibility, thermals are still a harsh reality that require active cooling and the thickness to support the ventilation and channeling that nullifies that goal. Don’t expect the x86 products to get any thinner due to the cooler needs unless Microsoft switches to AMD, and with Laptop 5 where AMD has been cast aside, it seems if anything that Microsoft has gotten suckered by Intel.
So why is my M1 iPad Pro so fast and power efficient - oh yeah, made by Apple…maybe MS should optimize its silicon and Win11 for their devices and tell the OEM’s to get with the program or lag along (instead of tag along0…
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