Call me cynical, but I feel like Microsoft's entire ecosystem, especially Windows 11 and now Surface, is seemingly headed in the right direction. At the start of the year, the tech giant promised to improve the operating system's overall user sentiment by addressing major pain points based on customer feedback.
Microsoft has made major moves on this front over the past few months, including reducing where Copilot appears and more. And now, Microsoft, in partnership with NVIDIA at Computex 2026, has unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra — equipped with 128GB of unified memory and full CUDA support with Windows-compatible RTX Spark under the hood. This powerhouse device breathes fresh air into the company's hardware division, signaling the dawn of what it calls “a new era of PC.”
Microsoft and NVIDIA's promise of a new era of PC seemingly sparked nostalgia for Microsoft veteran and former President of the Windows Division Steven Sinofsky when the first Surface hybrid PC ran on NVIDIA Tegra ARM silicon back in 2010/11 (via Tom's Hardware).
For good measure, his X post included a video attachment recorded with a Windows Phone, before Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the unfortunate decision to pull the plug on mobile.
The first Surface ran on Nvidia Tegra ARM chips precisely because the graphics processor and drivers were so much better than others and Nvidia was a fantastic partner. Windows 8 on ARM supported Qualcomm and TI as well. Slide below is from the CES event Jan 2011.It was later… https://t.co/TGXe1hiG7U pic.twitter.com/716Ghar5j5May 30, 2026
"Kinda sad for Qualcomm," an X user posted. "They've invested so much to get Windows on Arm into a usable state, and Nvidia swoops in to take advantage of that. Nvidia is strategic." It's this exact post that triggered Sinofsky's nostalgic response and retort, which indicated that it was history repeating itself, but this time with a (unsurprising) dash of artificial intelligence.
"Nvidia “swoops in”? Do you think history started in 2020?" another user indicated, reiterating Sinofsky's sentiments. "The first two generations of Surface tablets ran on Nvidia Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 chips, almost 15 years ago."
Sinofsky's post shows that the hype around Windows on Arm is not new, and that at the time most people believed it would ride high on "strong partnerships." But as highlighted by our sister site Tom's Hardware:
"This prior push for Windows on Arm didn’t exclusively support Nvidia Tegra. Sinofsky points out that Windows 8 on Arm also supported Qualcomm and TI processors. However, we saw Microsoft switch to a Qualcomm partnership focus in the years following. That collaborative effort also didn’t break through, even when the much-lauded Nuvia Oryon architecture arrived with the Snapdragon X family."
That said, it'll be interesting to see if Windows on Arm will manifest to its full glory this time around with Microsoft and NVIDIA's new commitment. "I think this is a smart move by Microsoft, although it is unfortunate that we know its pricing is going to be sky-high due to, ironically, the demand for AI putting macro pressure on NAND and RAM prices," our Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Rubino, added to his Surface Laptop Ultra reaction. Time will tell.
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