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After debuting a mini desktop system at CES this week, Nvidia is hinting it’ll expand into the CPU market for PCs.
During a Q&A with financial analysts, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia has more in store for the desktop CPU space. "You know, obviously we have plans,” he said, according to Reuters.
At CES, Nvidia unveiled Project DIGITS, which fits the company’s Blackwell GPU into a mini PC product starting at $3,000. Although the device is mainly meant to work as a peripheral server for AI researchers and developers, it also contains a powerful GB10 Superchip that features a Blackwell GPU and an Arm-based 20-core CPU based on Grace, Nvidia’s chip for data centers.
(Credit: Nvidia)So, it’s not hard to imagine the same chip powering a standalone PC. Nvidia designed the processor with Taiwanese smartphone chip vendor MediaTek, which is rumored to be working on Arm-based CPU processors for PCs with Nvidia. This comes as rival Qualcomm has been unleashing Arm-based chips for Windows laptops, offering an alternative to Intel- and AMD-based PCs.
In the Q&A with financial analysts, Huang added that MediaTek could choose to sell the GB10 Superchip more widely. “Now they could provide that to us, and they could keep that for themselves and serve the market. And so it was a great win-win,” Huang said.
In the meantime, Nvidia says Project DIGITS is slated to arrive in May through the company and its partners. DIGITS runs a custom version of Ubuntu Linux and can connect to a Windows or Mac PC. Customers can also combine two DIGITS together to double the AI processing power.