Dubbed  Pluton, the chip, announced today, is the brainchild of a partnership between Microsoft, and chip makers Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.

Pluton acts as a hardware root-of-trust, which protects a device's hardware from tampering, such as from hardware implants or by hackers exploiting flaws in the device's low-level firmware.

By integrating the chip inside future Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm central processor units, or CPUs, it makes it far more difficult for hackers with physical access to a computer to launch hardware attacks and extract sensitive data, the companies said.

Microsoft’s director of enterprise and operating system security at Microsoft David Weston said Pluton design will create a much tighter integration between the hardware and the Windows operating system at the CPU that will reduce the available attack surface.