SnapDragon ARM Architecture on Surface Tablets/Laptops (2025 Onwards)

After the introduction of Snapdragon processors into the Surface line of products, SQL is now unable to be installed on devices using these processors due to the new SNAPDRAGON processors being implemented in the new Surface PRO 11 tablets.

Intel and AMD Ryzen models of the surface products remain unaffected.

This is because SNAPDRAGON CPUs are mobile processors built on an ARM architecture. ARM will cache any background applications and processes not currently is use to preserve battery life and reduce performance intensity.

The drawbacks of this in SkyVisitor's use case is that SQL is a process that runs in the background and is continually referenced when data is being inserted or extracted from the SQL database tables whilst SkyVisitor is in use.

Testing was carried out to bypass the limitation with the use of a custom Powershell Script, which initially allowed SQL express to be installed on ARM architecture. However, after installing SQL 2019, and installing SkyTouch as normal. The application would take then take ~20 minutes to open when selected, and application performance once loaded was far from ideal as contant delays were observed where the application had to wait for data to be sent/recieved from SQL to proceed to the next check-in stage.

Going forward, Safetynet will only supply the Surface PRO 11 tablets equipped with the INTEL or AMD Ryzen processors installed.