Nvidia's 'high-end' Arm-based chip for PCs will reportedly go into production in 2025

Nvidia Thor SoC for automotive — (Image credit: Nvidia)

The idea that Nvidia is plotting an Arm-based chip for the PC is not news. But the latest coverage from DigiTimes (paywall) claiming that the chip is targeted at the "high end" and goes into production in less than a year makes the whole thing feel both pretty real and very proximate.

According to Digitimes (via Tom's Hardware), Nvidia's plans include both chips engineered in partnership with Mediatek and fully custom in-house designs. It's thought the version for consumer PCs will be pure Nvidia, while Mediatek will partner with Nvidia to create another Arm-based SoC for enterprise customers.

The latter may be necessary in order to provide full 5G cellular networking support, something that isn't critical for consumer PCs. If true, a new Nvidia chip for PCs would add to an already very exciting looking line up in 2025. Along with the new Nvidia chip, we're expecting Intel's next-gen Panther Lake architecture, plus Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2, though that's somewhat in question what with the ongoing dispute between Qualcomm and Arm.

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Moreover, it's easy to see when Nvidia would make this move. Given the scale and might of the company these days, it hard to imagine that it is happy being a mere GPU vendor on the PC. Surely, Nvidia wants to be able to sell pure-Nvidia PC platforms.

Indeed, some commentators think that it's actually Apple Nvidia has in mind with this new Arm-based chip. In this narrative, Nvidia jealously regards the control and prestige Apple has achieved with its MacBook computers now that they are all running Apple's own in-house designed silicon. Nvidia wants some of that action.

Whatever Nvidia's motivation, it looks like we'll get our first taste of a pure Nvidia chip for PCs late next year. Apart from laptops, an Nvidia Arm chip could have the makes of the best hardware yet seen for handheld gaming PCs. And if anyone can crack the gaming-on-Arm conundrum, it's got to be Nvidia.

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Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.