- Windows Dev Kit 2023 is built for developer workloads with the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 compute platform.
- Native Arm64 toolchain, including Visual Studio/VSCode, runtimes, libraries, and frameworks, provide a fast, familiar, and highly productive developer experience.
- For efficient testing and maximum CPU performance, users can use a single kit as a dev machine or stack multiple kits.
Microsoft announced the launch of Windows Dev Kit 2023, which was unveiled as Project Volterra at Build in May of 2022. The Arm-powered device is built to help developers create Windows apps easily and efficiently for Arm. The new device will be available in 8 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Build, run, test
The new device allows developers to bring the entire app development process onto one compact device by providing them everything needed. It is powered by the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform along with the Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK, allowing developers to benefit from the platform’s advanced AI capabilities. Windows Dev Kit 2023 comes with 32 GB RAM and 512 GB fast storage, along with built-in Wi-Fi 6, physical ethernet port, 3x USB-A and 2x USB-C, and a mini DisplayPort.
Windows Dev Kit 2023 also allows developers to create apps that can leverage the power of the NPU hardware to accelerate AI/ML workloads delivering AI-enhanced features and experiences without reducing performance. Users can access the power of the NPU through the open source and cross-platform ONNX Runtime inference engine. To boost productivity, Microsoft announced some commitments at Build in May 2022 to launch a comprehensive native toolchain for Arm native apps. The tech giant released previews of the following and many of these will be generally available by the end of the year:
- Previews of IDEs (Visual Studio 2022 17.4),
- Tools & Runtimes (Windows App SDK with native Arm support),
- Libraries (VC++ Runtime), Toolchain (.NET7)
Available now:
- .NET Framework 4.8.1 with the Windows 11 2022 Update so the large ecosystem of .NET Framework apps can also run natively on Arm64.
- Cloud services (Azure VMs)
- Arm64EC
Microsoft also made several improvements at .NET 7 for Arm in the areas of functional parity and performance. .NET 6 had some features that worked on x64 but not Arm64. .NET 7 is now closing this gap. Microsoft has added vendor-specific optimizations enabling apps to run well on a variety of Arm hardware. Also made several runtime improvements to targeting server throughput (RPS) and latency. Microsoft said,
« At Build 2022, we unveiled the vision to enable seamless AI inferencing across cloud and client through our emerging model of hybrid compute and AI with NPU enabled devices. We are working on this vision, and we will share more details in the coming months.
The Windows Dev Kit 2023 represents another step in creating a new developer platform that will enable you to build high-ambition cloud-native AI applications. With the native Arm64 Visual Studio, .NET support, and Windows Dev Kit 2023 we want to empower you to take the first step on this journey. You can get started today by building on our cloud and taking advantage of our tooling and services. »