Nvidia could be teaming up with MediaTek to create a Steam Deck-busting handheld gaming chip

pcgamer.com:

A few days ago we reported on news that Nvidia and MediaTek are set to release a new Arm-based chip for laptop PCs designed to cash in on the AI boom and compete with everything from traditional Intel and AMD APUs right through to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. Well, now there's a rumour that Nvidia and MediaTek are also cooking up a chip specifically designed for handheld gaming PCs.

Potentially, this is epic news. There's absolutely no doubting the Arm instruction set makes for more efficient chips. Some recent leaked data from Dell indicates that its new laptops with the Arm-based Qualcomm X Plus chip will offer nearly double the battery life of their traditional x86 equivalents.

Without a doubt, one of the weakest aspects of current gaming handhelds is poor battery life. At the same time, Nvidia graphics currently can't be had in a handheld beyond the OG Nintendo Switch. So, the prospect of Arm-based efficiency and Nvidia graphics in a handheld is pretty compelling.

You could imagine something much faster than the AMD Phoenix APU used by all the current handhelds du jour, including the Asus RoG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go, and with much better battery life. Add in DLSS upscaling, much better ray tracing, and the result would surely be a big, fat yes please.

For now, this is nothing more than a rumour from an X user self-styled as a «GPU veteran». But MediaTek and Nvidia have form and are currently producing chips for cars with Arm cores and Nvidia graphics and AI blocks. 

Of course, the Nintendo Switch uses an Nvidia Tegra X1 which has four Arm-design cores combined with Nvidia Maxwell-era graphics. And Nvidia's own Shield handheld (shown above) and Shield TV devices combined off-the-shelf Arm cores with Nvidia graphics.

The immediate questions that follow are why Nvidia would work with MediaTek on such a chip and exactly what kind of Arm cores might it have? It's hard to be sure on either count.

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