AMD is plotting a CPU based on the Arm rather than x86 instruction set. So goes the rumour and so has it gone for literally decades. Actually, it's more than just a rumour, since AMD announced an Arm chip years ago, but didn't actually release it. But the latest mutterings claim that an Arm-based chip from AMD will actually be available as soon next year. Allegedly, it's finally happening.
If it is, well, it certainly makes sense. Hitherto better known as the CPU technology of choice for smartphones, Arm has certainly been gaining momentum as an architecture for the PC.
What with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips, not to mention how successful Apple has been in switching its Mac computers from x86 to Arm, the long-anticipated ingress of Arm chips in traditional PCs seems to have begun at long last.
What's more, the latest data from analysts claims that Arm is indeed stealing ever more market share from AMD and Intel's traditional x86 processors. Mercury Research reckons that Arm's share of the PC processor market grew to 13.6% in the first quarter of 2025 from 10.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024. And no, that's not thanks to Apple selling a load of MacBooks.
"Arm client appears to have outperformed X86 processors in the first quarter, "Mercury says, "while Apple's Mac shipments were lower, we noted a modest increase in Arm CPUs going into Copilot enabled PCs, however the overall estimate for ARM client was much higher in the quarter primarily to what we believe was a large increase in shipments of processors into Chromebooks."
But what of that AMD chip? Rumoured to be known as Sound Wave, it's been on the cards since at least late 2023. The latest scuttlebutt says the chip will be built on TSMC N3 silicon and offer an RDNA 3.5-spec GPU with similar technology to the company's latest x86 APUs for the PC, as shown above.
Supposedly, Sound Wave is designed for a new generation of Microsoft Surface PCs, which currently use a mix of Intel x86 chips and Qualcomm Arm-based alternatives. Beyond that, not a great deal is known. Cores counts, whether those cores are custom design or generic IP—none of that is currently known.
But if one of the two big players in x86 does release a mainstream Arm chip for the PC, that will very significant. If it comes at about the same time as Nvidia's rumoured Arm chip for the PC, well, momentum really will be building and questioning x86's dominance will be wholly justified.
Nvidia's Arm APU is rumoured to go by the name N1 and to target a "high-end" PC experience. Again, not much is known about it in terms of core count or architecture. But it will certainly benefit from offering Nvidia's class-leading graphics architecture.
It's not hard to imagine these AMD and Nvidia Arm APUs making for killer chips for handheld gaming PCs. Maybe Valve could go with Arm for it's next-gen Steam Deck device. Whatever, if the rumours are right, we don't have long to wait to see how good AMD and Nvidia's take on Arm-on-PC actually is.
