With Qualcomm’s arrival in the world of Windows notebooks and Microsoft’s desire to push its Windows ARM to the forefront of Intel’s game, we knew that other players would be jumping on the bandwagon. Nvidia, while remaining discreet about its ambitions, has made no secret of it. By teaming up with one of the leaders in ARM SoCs, Mediatek, the greens intend to expand their territory rapidly. The two companies have joined forces to create a high-performance SoC for Windows ARM-based notebooks and desktops. But they also intend to capitalize on the growing popularity of portable consoles, whose Achilles heel remains battery life.
Nvidia / Mediatek SoC to arrive in early 2025
According to the latest rumors, the Arm PC SoC jointly developed by MediaTek and NVIDIA should be fully finalized in the third quarter of this year. It will then enter the verification phase in the fourth quarter and, barring any unpleasant surprises, should make its official debut in the first half of next year, with potential announcements during CES 2025. The aim of both companies is to offer the best of both worlds: an SoC that combines the best Arm processor with the best GPU in terms of performance per watt consumed. To this will be added the full panoply of proprietary technologies such as RTX Ray Tracing, DLSS and Frame Generation. All this will contribute to improving both visual quality and performance. Both companies are very ambitious, but have remained silent on this project. The main reason would be to catch AMD and Intel off-guard and grab a substantial market share from the launch. For the two partners, Qualcomm would not be a serious rival. MediaTek and NVIDIA hope to leapfrog Snapdragon PC SoCs and redefine performance in terms of graphics power and battery life. By then, Intel and AMD will also have presented x86 SoCs / APUs capable of exploiting Windows’ AI functionalities and offering greatly increased graphics power.
