Microsoft’s annual Build conference this week featured more local, and more flexible, hardware options to support developers’ agentic AI projects.
New hardware included a Windows PC that’s purpose-built for AI development — leveraging the latest NVIDIA Spark chips — and the disclosure of reference designs for new form factors – under the Project Solara name — to support AI development and deployment at the desktop and on the go.
In positioning its new hardware, and previously analyzed software rollouts, Microsoft referred to its overall concept as “unmetered intelligence,” that is, the ability to have local models and agents — at the network’s edge — operating alongside with work executing in the cloud.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who spoke via video at Build, outlined ways in which local and cloud-based intelligence can blend to drive developer productivity.
“The idea is that I could be traveling and I’m on the phone and I could text my PC, and ask my PC to get some coding done…and it would fire up the tools on the PC, and it would make the modifications, or the changes, or the design that I told it to do, and it would iterate with me while I’m away from the PC,” he said, referring to the evolution from a personal computer to a personal AI.
AI-Optimized ‘Dev Box’
Microsoft and NVIDIA are pushing to make the vision outlined by Huang a reality through the new Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, based on the RTX Spark chip NVIDIA formally launched last week. The system has 1 petaflop of AI compute along with 128GB of memory for each of its 20 CPU cores; it’s capable of locally running models with up to 120B parameters.
The Spark Dev Box is optimized for long-running training jobs, agentic AI pipelines, and local model fine-tuning. It runs a custom version of Windows 11 Pro; it comes pre-installed with widely used developer tools including Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot.
Microsoft’s objective with the dev box, Nadella said, was clear: “Let’s try and push the architecture to its limit for developers. What if we could just max the compute, max the memory, build out that developer machine?”
He added, “You now have a full local agentic loop: you can give it tools access and build a fully onboard agent or agentic applications without having to roundtrip to the cloud…in order to really push the limits and realize this unmetered intelligence.”
In a demo of the system, it ran three models simultaneously, locally and unmetered, while going about a regular dev flow. Surface RTX Spark Dev Box will be available later this year in the US.
Project Solara: New AI Form Factors
Nadella introduced Project Solara as an initiative aimed at helping users build and deploy AI across a “constellation” of devices so they can work more flexibly while maintaining context across workflows. “The next computer is not one device, it is all these devices working together as one system, with agents showing up closer to where and when you need them,” said Steven Bathiche, Corporate Vice President and Technical Fellow at Microsoft..
To that end, the company showcased two reference designs:
- An ID badge device concept using wearable silicon from Qualcomm. The concept makes agents accessible and available when users are away from the desk, moving between meetings, traveling, or working hands-free. The device aims to make AI computing adaptable across vertical industries (healthcare was cited as a prime example) and diverse workflows where computing hasn’t easily gone before.
- A desktop device concept powered by a MediaTek system on a chip that is always available, grounded in context, and designed to help think, plan, and get things done on an ambient basis. It gives workers access to their devices by walking up to them for “frictionless yet protected access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, grounded in Work IQ,” Bathiche said. “It even supports experiences like handoff between devices, acting as a companion to your existing Windows PC, or it can let you access your cloud PC through Windows 365 and a connected monitor.”
Related Microsoft AI Analysis:
- Microsoft Enhances Copilot Studio With Deeper Integration of Agents Into Core Processes
- Governance Tools Ensure AI Agents Play Within the Rules at Runtime
- How Agent 365 and WorkIQ Redefine Business in the AI Era
- Microsoft Extends Reach of Copilot Cowork to Mobile Devices and New Data Sources
- Agent 365: The Platform That Keeps CIOs in Charge as Agents Proliferate
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