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Nvidia's first full SoC for the PC, RTX Spark, is finally here. But could it form the basis of a killer gaming handheld? Superficially, that seems like a bit of a no-brainer, what with Nvidia's dominance in gaming graphics. But comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang yesterday make that appear unlikely.
Speaking after his Computex keynote, Huang responded to a question about the possible use of RTX Spark in a handheld.
"If somebody wants to do it, you know, we'll work with them on it. But right now we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal, reinventing the PC after 40 years," Huang said.
He went on to explain what a "gigantic project" it is for Nvidia just to launch a PC chip. "Remember all of these applications in the Windows world, the x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically, and all the games they have to have anti cheat turned on. And so all of that stuff is really, really hard," Huang explained.
"It took us three years working with Microsoft and two and a half years working with MediaTek to get here, hundreds of people, that's how hard it is, and that's why everybody's so excited about it," Huang says of RTX Spark.
It's all part of his plan, it seems, to reinvent the PC in the age of AI. "Can we help reinvent the PC? And, boy, if you get a chance to reinvent the single most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity, what you and I grew up with defined just about everything about our lives, and we have an opportunity after 40 years to go reinvent it for the age of AI. Wow, we're not going to sit around, not let it get done," Huang said.
In that context, you can see how making a gaming handheld out of RTX Spark is a bit, well, tangential. Is it yet another indication that gaming is now a very low priority at Nvidia? Possibly.
Of course, the full RTX Spark Chip is probably not a goer for handhelds. It's got 20 Arm cores and a GPU with pretty much identical specs to a desktop RTX 5070 GPU. That's surely too big and too powerful for a handheld, even if Nvidia is claiming its battery life will be "much better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops."
As I understand it, however, there is a smaller version of RTX Spark coming with fewer CPU cores and a GPU less than half the size, codenamed N1 as opposed to N1x for the full-size RTX Spark chip. And that could be a much better candidate for a gaming handheld.
The thing is, if Nvidia was actively working with partners on an RTX Spark-based gaming handheld, you'd think Huang would have answered that question quite differently. As it is, he's clear that's not where Nvidia's "focus" is right now. Which probably shouldn't be a surprise, as gaming really doesn't seem to be a high priority at Nvidia of late.
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