At the end of last year, I listed a possible Nvidia laptop chip (ie, not just the GPU but the CPU, too) as something I'd really like to see from 2025, and since then we've had plenty of intimations that we might actually see such a thing. Now, we're hearing this might be announced at Computex later this month.
According to ComputerBase (machine translated), "the official unveiling [of an Nvidia PC chip] is now expected at Computex 2025." This wouldn't be a solo venture, though, as it's expected to be made in partnership with MediaTek, based on the Nvidia and MediaTek GB10 chip that sits inside DGX Spark home-user supercomputer (previously called Project Digits).
If it is based on GB10, that would presumably mean a processor using its Arm-designed CPU cores rather than custom Nvidia-designed ones. This wouldn't be a massive surprise, but there was previously at least some reason to believe that it could be using custom-designed chips, given previous rumours and that Nvidia recently announced a custom-designed Arm chip called Vera to succeed its previous Arm-designed Grace chips.
Whether it's custom or Arm-designed, it will be an Arm chip, meaning much will rely on Windows on Arm (WoA). We've seen Arm chips using WoA in the wild over the past year in the form of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips that sit inside some laptops. These have great battery life, but there are still some problems with Windows on Arm, especially for gaming. That's mainly thanks to Prism emulation that still struggles with some games.
WoA does seem to be steadily improving, though, and one can only assume Nvidia would have a better time of getting gaming to work than Qualcomm, given the company is already king of the Windows graphics space. Still, there's not a lick that Nvidia can do about Prism emulation itself, so it won't be entirely in the chip giant's hands.
To be clear, that an Nvidia PC chip is in the works isn't all based on rumours: At the start of this year, Nvidia officially confirmed it is working on an end-user system on a chip (SoC) based on DGX Spark.
Now, both Nvidia and MediaTek will be delivering keynotes at Computex on May 19 and 20, respectively, so it makes sense that both companies would use this as a chance to announce an upcoming collaborative consumer SoC.
ComputerBase points out that, according to DigiTimes, MediaTek has booked additional capacity for semiconductor assembly and testing with ASE, implying that this is because of the upcoming laptop chips. Without seeing what this additional capacity is officially booked for, however, we can't say for certain.
We also can't say for certain how such chips will perform. Previous rumours had it that the upcoming SoC should have RTX 4070 mobile and Strix Halo-level performance, and ComputerBase speculates that instead of the 20 CPU cores in the GB10, the laptop chips will likely have "perhaps only eight to twelve, and the RAM [is] likely to be a quarter of that or even less, i.e. 32 or 16 GB—depending on which market segment is ultimately targeted."
Whatever the case, it's certainly an exciting prospect that we could have an Nvidia chip sitting inside some laptops, which would presumably be low-power ones given Arm chips tend to be very efficient. And that they might give us all the benefits of the Blackwell GPU architecture for gaming. And we might not have too long to find out. Roll on Computex.
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