Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled that it was working on a dev kit that went by the code-name Project Volterra. Now that some time has passed, the company is finally ready to give us an official look at what Project Volterra entails. This compact computer is called Windows Dev Kit 2023 and is aimed at developers looking to create applications that can run on Windows PCs equipped with ARM processors.
Given the name, you can understand what it will be used for. Though it has Windows 11 Pro installed, it will support features such as Windows Subsystem for Linux, virtual machines, and dev tools from Visual Studio and VSCode. On top of that, applications can be built to run on an NPU (neural processing unit).
But enough about the software. On the hardware side, the Dev Kit 2023 comes with a shell made with 20% recycled ocean plastic. As for the processor, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip has four ARM Cortex-X1 cores, four Cortex-A78 CPU cores, Adreno graphics, and an NPU. You’ll also find 32GB LPDDR4x RAM and 512GB of NVMe storage. Connectivity will come with two USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a mini DisplayPort, an RJ45 port, support for WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.1.
While this may be the fastest ARM-based computer to date, it even offers a price of US$600. For what it’s worth, devs out there may get this to help port their software to ARM architecture. Though this is an ARM-based PC for devs, it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to make this PC run something other than VMs and Visual Studio.
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