Some people are pretty excited that we are on the cusp of a new Windows PC era ignited by technologies from the mighty Nvidia and Arm. Our article on the teasers for the rumored wave of new N1X laptops makes it clear that companies like Nvidia and Microsoft are excited, at least. However, Microsoft veteran Steven Sinofsky is here to remind folks that it has been done before, with a similar level of simmering excitement, when the first Surface hybrid PC ran on Nvidia Tegra Arm silicon back in 2010/11.
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
Sinofsky shares some interesting media in the above embedded Tweet. There’s a slide from the promotional deck, shown at CES 2011, where the “strong partnerships” behind this Windows on Arm thrust would surely lead to unstoppable momentum. That’s what you may have believed if you swallowed the effusive presentations at the time.
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.
The former-President of the Windows Division (July 2009 to Nov 2012) also shares a video that should be preserved for posterity. Check it out to witness “an old school Windows Phone video of the first time Windows ran on Nvidia Tegra Arm using the desktop compositor which was a BIG deal. Sept 2010.”
The video appears to show a Tegra dev kit running Windows 7, with multi-window and Start menu manipulation, which looks rather lethargic to my eyes. However, that was a “first” achievement several months before CES 2011, and it would be over a year and a half until the Surface RT shipped to customers (October 2012).
Will the latest Nvidia and Arm thrust into Windows work out better? We’ll probably have a much better idea about that in the coming days at Computex. Sinofsky replies to some comments on his Tweet to say the result could be “a reliable platform for graphics compute,” using Windows. Pricing is also obviously going to be a sticky issue for any new platform looking to attract buyers right now.
