Dell hints at Nvidia-made chips for Windows AI PCs as soon as next year

Nvidia AI
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When the first rumors about AMD's and Nvidia's plans to develop Arm-based processors for PCs emerged last year, we had certain doubts about such intentions given the datacenter focus of these companies. But this week, Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell, and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, somewhat confirmed the information. It now looks like the green company will come up with its processor for 'AI PCs' as soon as next year; however, there's a catch. 

When Bloomberg asked about Nvidia's place in the emerging AI PC segment during a group interview, Michael Dell told Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow to 'come back next year,' while Jensen Huang responded 'exactly.' Such answers could be interpreted as confirmation of Nvidia's plans to address the upcoming Windows-on-Arm AI PC market with its own processors. While this is not going to be precisely a blue ocean market, with around 280 million PCs sold every year, this market is hard to ignore. 

After all, Nvidia has everything it needs to build system-on-chips for PCs, including Arm general-purpose cores, GeForce graphics processors, Tensor cores for AI, and various other hardware. With SoCs aimed at PCs, Nvidia could address other adjacent markets, such as game consoles and perhaps embedded devices that need AI capabilities on the edge. 

Speaking of Nvidia-accelerated AI capabilities, it is necessary to note that even today, multiple applications that take advantage of artificial intelligence can be accelerated with contemporary Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs. From this point of view, Nvidia has already enabled AI experience on tens of millions of PCs featuring its latest GeForce RTX 30 and 40 series, which are shipped every quarter. 

"All of our GPUs have the same Tensor cores that are running on H100 in the cloud," said Huang. "Every one of our GPUs uses AI to the work. AI will transform gaming. All of the nonplayer character will be chatbots. Creating world will be easier. Instead of instruction driven computing, it [is going to be] intention driven computing, so it will be easier to write programs." 

We should note that Nvidia has not confirmed its return to the market of Windows PCs with its own processors just yet. After all, the company could address this market by licensing its IP to third partners, which would reduce risks and increase profit margins but still ensure that Nvidia gets its piece of the pie. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • vanadiel007
    "All of the nonplayer character will be chatbots. Creating world will be easier. Instead of instruction driven computing, it intention driven computing, so it will be easier to write programs."

    Ugh, they can't even write error free code today, with games being full of bugs and unfinished content at release.
    And here's this guy claiming it will be easier...
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley
    MediaTek and Nvidia have a partnership where MediaTek supplies the SoC and Nvidia supplies the graphics and AI. MediaTek has announced that they intend to get into the Windows AI PC market, so this could be it.
    Reply
  • Notton
    This is old news.
    reuters, of all places, had this story 7 months ago.
    https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-make-arm-based-pc-chips-major-new-challenge-intel-2023-10-23/
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley said:
    MediaTek and Nvidia have a partnership where MediaTek supplies the SoC and Nvidia supplies the graphics and AI. MediaTek has announced that they intend to get into the Windows AI PC market, so this could be it.

    I suppose that was only about the MediaTek Dimensity Auto system. A different take on this, since the Mediatek partnership only incorporated NVIDIA's GPU IP, RTX graphcis in the Dimensity SOCs which are responsible for the Auto Cockpit.

    https://www.mediatek.com/products/automotive
    Reply
  • kealii123
    "Instead of instruction driven computing, it intention driven computing"

    Very skeptical. Algorithmic computing is much more deterministic, while AI generated computing is too open ended. Game developers, like all developers, want a known outcome.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    Nvidia has everything it needs to build system-on-chips for PCs, including Arm general-purpose cores, GeForce graphics processors, Tensor cores for AI, and various other hardware.
    It already does have its own SoCs! The Nintendo Switch is using just one in a long line of them, and there are many newer ones that have been made, so far.

    The article said:
    the company could address this market by licensing its IP to third partners, which would reduce risks and increase profit margins but still ensure that Nvidia gets its piece of the pie.
    Mediatek is one such licensee. It'd be interesting (but not unheard of) for Nvidia to compete with one of its partners.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Metal Messiah. said:
    I suppose that was only about the MediaTek Dimensity Auto system. A different take on this, since the Mediatek partnership only incorporated NVIDIA's GPU IP, RTX graphcis in the Dimensity SOCs which are responsible for the Auto Cockpit.

    https://www.mediatek.com/products/automotive
    My take on that is Mediatek decided to tap the automotive market, while waiting for the Windows-on-ARM exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm to expire. This lets them build a higher-spec SoC than they normally do, and potentially get it in the hands of laptop makers to do some preliminary eval/integration work.
    Reply
  • NeoMorpheus
    ThomasKinsley said:
    MediaTek and Nvidia have a partnership where MediaTek supplies the SoC and Nvidia supplies the graphics and AI. MediaTek has announced that they intend to get into the Windows AI PC market, so this could be it.
    Someone should teach Mediatek the tale of the scorpion. :devilish:

    And sounds like Dell found another company willing to “donate” to their coffers, since it looks like intel can’t continue bribing them.
    Reply
  • rluker5
    This sounds like it could just be an AI coprocessor on the motherboard like the old graphics chips AMD and Nvidia used to make. It would not have to be large to adequately supplement a desktop chip that doesn't have a large enough NPU.

    Edit: Doesn't Raptor Lake have support for some mysterious AI M.2 that never materialized? It might have been some premature preparation for AI Windows.

    On a related note I'm finding the intrusiveness of Microsoft Copilot far more aggravating than any Windows ads. It pops up far too much and sometimes makes my pc feel like my OS is some free phone app. I would pay a fee to get a "premium" CPU or motherboard that lacks the NPU necessary to fuel these interruptions for services I have no desire to use.
    Reply
  • Well, some details emerged from that interview.

    NVIDIA might leverage a 3nm process node, reportedly either Intel or TSMC, and an advanced packaging solution to bring Arm-based Cortex X5 BlackHawk CPU cores & the Blackwell RTX GPU cores together.

    It's plausible that NVIDIA would use the Cortex X5 BlackHawk CPU cores since they are reportedly partnering with MediaTek to create these SOCs. NVIDIA SOCs are also stated to feature LPDDR6 memory as an on-package design.
    TSMC N3P
    LPDDR6 memory
    Cortex X5 BlackHawk CPU
    Blackwell RTX GPU cores
    1793469879334687122View: https://x.com/XpeaGPU/status/1793469879334687122
    1793523940968820899View: https://x.com/Kepler_L2/status/1793523940968820899


    Previous Tweets:

    1790588407942684944View: https://x.com/XpeaGPU/status/1790588407942684944
    1789825653501833463View: https://x.com/dnystedt/status/1789825653501833463
    Reply