Microsoft lists Ryzen AI 500, Intel Core Ultra 4, and other future CPUs in its Windows AI roadmap
Microsoft unveils next-generation CPU names with its AI roadmap
Microsoft has shown a new slide detailing its Windows “hybrid Intelligence” (AI) roadmap, detailing several upcoming processors from AMD, Intel and Qualcomm. It even includes next-generation products like AMD Ryzen AI 500 series CPUs (Zen 6?), Intel Core Ultra Series 4 CPUs (Nova Lake), and even Intel’s Crescent Island GPU. It also refers to future AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm products as “AMD Next” and “Intel Core Ultra Next”.
Based on the slide below, Microsoft expects AI PCs to ship with more memory, mentioning “128GB+” PCs while relegating 8GB and 16GB PCs to “Local context and actions” and “Local Quick Questions”, respectively. 32GB and 64GB PCs are said to be good for “Local delegated tasks” and “Local Long-running tasks”, respectively.
Microsoft calls 8GB PCs Tier 0, 16-64GB PCs Tier 1, and 128GB+ PCs Tier 2. Tier 3 refers to dedicated AI “supercomputer” systems that can run frontier models locally.
— HXL (@9550pro) November 3, 2026
Microsoft has made it clear that its AI ambitions for Windows are not finished, despite the insane cost of memory. Based on this new Microsoft roadmap, AI will remain a core aspect of future products from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. While NPUs remain useless silicon for most PC users, we can expect next-generation AMD, Intel and Qualcomm CPUs to continue featuring them. Let’s hope future apps will use this silicon. After all, silicon is expensive, and nobody likes to pay for unused features.
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