(Nvidia)
After years of rumors, Nvidia is introducing the company’s first Arm-based CPUs for consumer laptops and mini PCs, or what it dubs RTX Spark. But the goal is to go beyond creating a personal computer, and eventually bring AI supercomputers to people's homes.
In his Computex keynote in Taiwan, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang announced RTX Spark, saying, "40 years later, Microsoft and Nvidia are going to reinvent the PC."
The PC chips have not only been designed to be fast and power efficient, but they also promise to run autonomous AI agents, capable of completing tasks for you 24/7, according to Huang.
"I could totally imagine some day there is an AI super computer in your house, and it's running all of your agents, it's running all of your assistants, " he added. "And you have to have it in your house, just like you have a home theater in your house."
Nvidia plans on launching the first RTX Spark laptops using an "N1X" processor built in partnership with Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. The chip uses TSMC's 3 nanometer manufacturing node. The first products will arrive this fall through the top PC makers including Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Microsoft’s own Surface brand.
The fall launch will start with six premium laptops before expanding to 30 laptop models, and 10 mini desktops, with the goal to target content creators, AI developers and gamers.
The new product family seems similar to Nvidia's DGX Spark platform, a class of mini PCs that also use the company's CPUs and GPUs, but were designed for AI researchers and developers. The key difference is that RTX Spark is specifically meant for consumers and the Windows 11 OS, whereas DGX Spark runs a custom version of Ubuntu Linux.
(Nvidia)The RTX Spark “superchip” fuses two "chiplets" together: a GPU based on Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture featuring 6,144 CUDA cores, and a 20-core Nvidia Grace CPU. The design appears to be the same as the GB10 superchip in the DGX Spark.
Perhaps to stand out from other Arm-based laptops, like those from Apple and Qualcomm, Nvidia's presentation noted the RTX Spark can support up to 128GB LPDDR5X in unified memory, enabling the CPU and GPU to share an extremely large pool of RAM. In return, a user can locally run AI models spanning up to 120 billion parameters, similar to the DGX Spark.
The Nvidia laptops have also been built for video and 3D content creation, along with PC gaming, offering performance similar to a laptop-focused RTX 5070, but at better energy efficiency. "Microsoft and Nvidia meticulously optimized everything," Huang added, noting the company's Arm-based chip can run any Windows application.
(Nvidia)“This is the most efficient PC chip ever built,” said Mark Aevermann, Nvidia’s consumer product marketing lead, in a press briefing. In a Q&A, Aevermann said the RTX Spark laptops will feature 14- to 16-inch screens, and weigh as little as three pounds with a thickness as low as 0.55 inches.
In addition, RTX Spark qualifies as Windows Copilot+ PCs, meaning the laptops can leverage enhanced AI features in the OS. Alongside the laptops, RTX Spark will also appear in mini PCs. A slide in Huang's presentation teased that RTX Spark will expand into Windows-based desktop towers too.
(Nvidia)The big mystery is pricing and performance benchmarks, along with more specifics about running x86 programs. Nvidia will likely reveal more in the coming months closer to the fall launch. Still, we suspect the RTX Spark is geared more toward power users and AI enthusiasts willing to pay up, considering the up to 128GB in unified memory means the laptops could get very pricey at max specs, especially in light of the ongoing memory shortage.
(Nvidia)For perspective, Nvidia’s DGX Spark features 128GB of RAM, and can be priced from $3,499 to $4,699, depending on the model. Microsoft also told us its own RTX Spark product, the Surface Laptop Ultra, will be the company’s most powerful model yet, a sign it won't be cheap.
Despite the possible high price, Nvidia’s entry into consumer PC chips could shake up the market in other ways. Most notably, it promises to help expand PC gaming to Arm-based processors when x86-based gaming using AMD and Intel silicon has long reigned supreme. Nvidia noted it’s working with a wide range of software developers to create native versions of their PC games and anti-cheat software for the Arm architecture. In other cases, the developers are optimizing their x86 titles so that they run efficiently on the Arm architecture through Microsoft’s Prism emulator.
Nvidia also appears to be betting that RTX Spark will gain steam when more users have been buying new PCs precisely to run AI agents and models locally, such as OpenClaw. Rival AMD has even been pushing a new product category called the “Agent Computer.”
(Nvidia)In his keynote, Nvidia's CEO showed off a roadmap, indicating the company already has plans for successive generations of RTX Spark chips in store. For customers looking for a tower desktop, the company has started selling the DGX Station, which contains a more powerful Nvidia GB300 chip featuring a staggering 748GB in memory. The pricing for the GB300 has been spotted at over $100,000.