In case you've been living under a rock, Surface is Microsoft's forthcoming Windows tablet and should not be confused with what MS previously called Surface--a table-top-sized 40-inch touchscreen made by Samsung which has been renamed Surface-40 (SUR40)
Surface, shown above with an optional keyboard built into its lid, will be released to enterprises first, according to Microsoft OEMs who will integrate it with Windows servers and desktops using virtualization. A standalone consumer version will likely come later, probably in 2013. The enterprise version is said to run Windows RT on an ARM-based processor from Nvidia while the consumer Surface is said to run Windows-8 on an Intel Ivy Bridge x86 processor.
Dell, HP, Lenovo and other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are already developing Android-based tablets to compete with Microsoft's Surface, but those won't be able to execute x86 code. Its also not clear whether both the ARM- and x86-versions of the new Windows OS will be made available to OEMs for their Windows tablets, since those would directly compete with Microsoft's Surface.
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