Microsoft has started taking preorders for the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact AI‑focused mini PC. It costs about $6,000 and will begin shipping in November. The box uses Nvidia’s Arm‑based RTX Spark platform, 128 GB of unified memory and a 100‑watt thermal envelope. It runs a developer‑optimized Windows 11 Pro setup with Visual Studio Code, Git, GitHub Copilot and other tools preinstalled. Microsoft says it can handle local AI models larger than 120 billion parameters.
Why it matters
Developers can now test very large AI models on‑device without needing a costly data‑center server.
