Nvidia's 'high-end' Arm-based chip for PCs will reportedly go into production in 2025
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.
2025 should also see Apple roll out its M5 SoCs. Those obviously won't go into PCs running Windows, but will add to the broader competitive landscape for premium computer chips.
Exactly how Nvidia will pitch its own Arm-based chip for laptops isn't clear. However, you'd think it would lean heavily on Nvidia's graphics technology. Ultimately, you'd expect it to offer the best graphics performance on the market.
However, if Nvidia's graphics architectures are familiar, any new CPU core design would be very novel. Nvidia has produced plenty of chips with Arm cores in the past, including Tegra chips. But they've generally used off-the-shelf CPU designs licenced from Arm.
The implication with this new PC chip for 2025 is that it may well debut a new in-house CPU core design from Nvidia. It would certainly be far more interesting if it did. That would also enable Nvidia to offer something much more performant than Arm's own CPU core designs.
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