But you will need a powerful system with 64 GB of RAM to use it.
Continuing the trend of making Windows 11 suck less, Microsoft today announced Project Zenith, a new “code-ready, distraction-free Windows experience” for powerful development hardware with 64GB of RAM and plenty of memory bandwidth. Project Zenith will first be available on AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo desktop mini, with other devices to follow. Clearly, the focus is on local AI development – a timely move as cloud AI token costs begin to rise.
Logan Ayer, CVP of Microsoft’s Windows Platform, says Project Zenith will allow developers to “run over 30 billion settings templates locally and unlimitedly.” The goal, really, is to remove unnecessary elements from Windows to create a more Linux-like experience. Ayer says that the Zenith project will have pre-installed tools for multiple languages and runtimes, and that Windows itself will be more developer-friendly from the start, with settings like full file extensions and hidden files enabled by default.
“Project Zenith is not about prescribing a single workflow,” Ayer wrote in a blog post today. “You can continue to configure, extend and customize your environment around the tools, languages and frameworks you prefer. It’s about starting from a better baseline, shaped by the settings and tools developers first sought, so a new device works with you to accelerate your workflows.
While it’s nice to see Microsoft streamlining Windows 11, continuing efforts announced earlier this year by removing forced Copilot AI integration, it’s strange to see Project Zenith limited to incredibly expensive development hardware. I’m sure many indie developers would love to have a cleaner version of Windows, but requiring 64GB of RAM in the age of RAMaggedon seems inexcusable. (Especially (as Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and its overall AI push is one of the main reasons memory prices have skyrocketed.)
